Ian J. Alexander

  • Assistant Professor
  • MEDIA STUDIES
ian Alexander
Address

Armory 1B27

Assistant Professor Ian J. Alexander studies media, technology, and political struggle, especially in the context of US prisons and jails. His interests (scholarly and otherwise) include: histories and theories of media, technology, revolutionary social movements, capitalism, and counterinsurgency; Appalachian string band music; and baseball.
 
Drawing on media history, science and technology studies, critical prison studies, the Black Radical Tradition, and theories and histories of various revolutionary movements, Alexander’s work looks at media technologies deployed in US prisons as terrains of struggle and weapons for both repression and liberation. His first book, The Carceral Media Regime: Technologies of Disaggregation, Pacification, and Rebellion in US Prisons, consists of a series of histories of media technologies’ adaptations behind the prison wall, and provides a theoretical structure for grasping media technologies as indispensable for prison operations and carceral counterinsurgency in and beyond the prison. The book will appear on Duke University Press in 2026. He has published several articles on carceral media technologies, including “Are Payphones Obsolete?” (Media Fields Journal, 2021), “Re-Wiring the Prison: Early Radio as a Carceral Technology” (International Journal of Communication, 2020), and “The Hole and the Bus: Carceral Infrastructures of Counter-Solidarity” (Against Catastrophe, 2023).
 
Alexander completed his PhD in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University and his MA in the Media Studies program at Pratt Institute. Before joining CU-Boulder, he held visiting positions at Carnegie Mellon University and Wellesley College. Alexander grew up in Clarion County, PA, where he began his college education at Clarion University of Pennsylvania.