Alexandra Brown
visiting assistant professor of spanish
| Office: Palamoutain Hall 408 Phone: 518.580.5227 Email: abrown7@skidmore.edu |  |
Alexandra Brown teaches courses on Spanish language and Latin American literature. Her teaching uses the communicative approach to foreground student conversation during class, and her courses at all levels incorporate a wide variety of cultural materials from Latin America. Her language students explore the work of authors, artists, entrepreneurs, scientists, and chefs, building Spanish language skills by engaging Latin American cultures. In literature courses, Professor Brown blends elements of her research with broader exposure to contemporary Latin American novels, short stories, and films, and invites her students to integrate their own interests into the class.
Alexandra’s research focuses on 20th and 21st century Latin American literature, especially science fiction, the fantastic, and fantasy. She uses genre theory to analyze how irrealist genres respond to shifts in economic development, the advent of new technologies, or changes in scientific thinking, and argues that when a genre undergoes a structural change, it can tell us something about the hopes for the future present at that moment in the society in which it was produced. Her research also examines how feminist movements—and feminist writers—asserted themselves as a defining force in irrealist expression throughout the 20th century.