A proud graduate of The Ohio State University, Dr. Stacey Alex will be teaching Spanish and Latina/o/x Studies as an assistant professor at Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa this fall.
Between earning her BA and MA in Spanish literature at the University of Iowa, Dr. Alex taught middle and high school Spanish, dual language Spanish and ESL in West Liberty, Iowa. She also coordinated a K-8 ESL program at Escuela Bella Vista in Maracaibo, Venezuela.
Her research examines how Latinx communities create a sense of belonging through cultural and narrative resistance in the face of racialized, biopolitical segregation resulting from U.S. immigration policies, the media, and educational institutions. In her dissertation, Dr. Alex analyzes undocumented Latinx narratives across theater, comics, memoir, and music as decolonial cultural production and counter-storytelling. The works examined rely on surrogates to publicize and justify everyday undocumented disobedience that otherwise would not be shared for fear of deportation. Attending to the diverse and, at times, contradictory perspectives and approaches to social transformation found across these works positions undocumented communities as dynamic social agents that draw on a wide variety of ways to forge a politics of possibility.
Dr. Alex also examines popular culture, identity politics, and gender and sexuality through radio, children’s games, folklore, and children’s literature.