Research
Alexandra Lee Meany specializes in 20th and 21st-century Multi-Ethnic U.S. Literature and the Urban Humanities. Her research examines how the U.S. city produces ideas about gender and race.
Publication: “Tucson, City of Thieves:” Biocapitalism and Land Dispossession in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead
This article, published in MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (Winter 2025), engages two hitherto under-examined threads in Leslie Marmon Silko’s 1991 novel, Almanac of the Dead: (1) the figure of the “urban Indian” and (2) Indigenous critiques of biocapitalism. It argues that theft of human blood for profit and the accumulation of land for real estate development are linked forces of colonial racial capitalism’s violence and expansion visible in the historical geography of Tucson.
View the article here: https://academic.oup.com/melus/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/melus/mlae064/7953879?utm_source=advanceaccess&utm_campaign=melus&utm_medium=email
Book Project: Urban Removal: Postwar U.S. Multi-Ethnic Literatures and Geographies of Struggle
The project treats novels as a site for re-engaging the period of so-called Urban Renewal in U.S. cities from the 1940s through the 1980s as a historical conjuncture wherein understandings of race, gender, and housing were “renewed” and contested. Spotlighting multiple cities — New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Tucson — and four differently racialized groups (Black, Chicanx, Asian, and Indigenous), the dissertation explores how novels by women of color bring into view contested ideas about what counts as proper housing and who belongs in a city.
Fellowship: Society of Scholars, The Simpson Center for the Humanities
University of Washington
A 2023-2024 Society of Scholars Summer fellow, Alexandra participated in an intellectual community of humanists of diverse generations, academic ranks, and departmental affiliations. In weekly cohort meetings, fellows discussed their research in progress. Alexandra presented sections from her dissertation, “Urban Removal: Post-war U.S. Urban Literatures and Geographies of Violence.”
Presentation: “‘Tucson, City of Thieves:’ Biocapitalism, Real Estate, and Dispossession in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead”
Modern Lanugage Association
Alexandra presented on a panel for Postcolonial Aesthetics, Decolonization, and Dispossession at the 2024 MLA convention. Her paper activates an Indigenous critique of new expressions in the dispossession and commodification of life and land unique to the latest phase of colonial racial capitalism in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead (1991).
Presentation: “Colonial Racial Capitalism and the Urgency of Space”
Modern Lanugage Association
Alexandra presented work on Celebration and Spatiality: A Geocritical Roundtable at the 2024 MLA convention. Her presentation will discuss how a focus on space might offer important insight into past and present expressions of what some scholars are calling “colonial racial capitalism.”
For a complete list of past research projects and conference presentations contact alexmeany5@gmail.com.