Biography
Alexandria Kapczynski is a Ph.D candidate in English with a concentration in Writing Studies.
I earned my B.A. in Communication Studies with dual minors in Gender Studies and English – Literature from the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW). My introductory undergrad experiences within UNCW's English department encouraged me to pursue a M.A. in English, after which I spent a semester as an adjunct lecturer at my alma mater. The opportunity to further engage with interdisciplinary research, consciousness-raising pedagogy, and larger academic conversations, lead me to UIUC.
Research Interests
My most recent work aims to question compulsorily accepted discourses by critically considering expressions and representations of intersectional politicized identities (i.e. gender, sexuality, mental illness, (dis)ability, race, class, etc.).
A staunch character & Sapphic scribbler—I spend most of my ink-blotting days trying to uphold queer embodied rhetoric feminist notions (and my glasses). As far as icebreakers, and interview question blurbs go—“The unifying goal of my research, scholarship, publishing, and pedagogy revolves around uncovering the multimodality of composition tools, which grant affordances for reclaiming difference through literacy.”
I am personally-politically-academically invested in the claim: History helps one understand the privileges afforded by an activity system’s tools, and who those means are afforded by. Thus, the re-mediation of those tools can function to reclaim alternatives and create a more diversely informed collective space within that system (and/or society).
Additional Campus Affiliations
English - Writing Studies Doctoral Candidate