Department of English

Alexandra Gjaja

A.B., English and African American Studies, Princeton University, 2023
Alexandra_Gjaja@brown.edu
Research Interests African American Studies and the Black Atlantic, American Literature and Culture, Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Race and Ethnicity, Renaissance and Early Modern, 20th-Century and Contemporary

Biography

My current research focuses on canonical revision as a counter-hegemonic artistic strategy particularly favored by marginalized writers. My work pays particular attention to contemporary revisions of Shakespeare plays. Treating these revisions as a genre in conversation with each other as much as with their source texts allows me to investigate how, beyond writing back against empire, these authors use shared understandings of source plays as an aesthetic medium by which to access and articulate concerns that span the diaspora. In addition to the questions of canonicity and revision that animate my scholarship, my research interests include textual circulation in the English-speaking world, drama and performance studies, postcolonialism, and 20th-century American literature.