Jonathan Alexander

Chancellor's Professor of English and Gender & Sexuality Studies, University of California, Irvine
University of California, Irvine

Jonathan’s research areas include Writing Studies, Composition/Rhetoric, New Media Studies, and Sexuality Studies.

His scholarly work focuses primarily on the use of emerging communications technologies in the teaching of writing and in shifting conceptions of what writing, composing, and authoring mean.

Jonathan also works at the intersection of the fields of writing studies and sexuality studies, where he explores what theories of sexuality, particularly queer theory, have to teach us about literacy and literate practice in pluralistic democracies.

Jonathan’s books include “Writing Youth: Young Adult Fiction as Literacy Sponsorship” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), “On Multimodality: New Media in Composition Studies” (with Jacqueline Rhodes, CCC Studies in Writing & Rhetoric, 2014), “Understanding Rhetoric: A Graphic Guide to Writing” (with Elizabeth Losh, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2013), “Bisexuality and Queer Theory” (edited with Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, Routledge, 2011), “Finding Out: An Introduction to LGBT Studies” (with Deborah Meem and Michelle Gibson, Sage, 2010) and “Literacy, Sexuality, Pedagogy: Theory and Practice for Composition Studies” (Utah State University Press, 2008).

From this contributor

Explore more from The Transmitter

Illustration of spiny mouse.

Learning why spiny mice play well with others

Aubrey Kelly studies the gregarious mammal to explore how the brain controls complex social behaviors “akin to friendship.”

By Hannah Thomasy
2 June 2026 | 5 min read
Research image of human thalamus.

Autism-linked genes expressed in thalamus make an impact, and more

Here is a roundup of autism-related news and research spotted around the web for the week of 1 June.

By Jill Adams
2 June 2026 | 2 min read
Illustration of differing lines of data.

Eighteen teams analyzed the same neurophysiology dataset—and got wildly different answers

The “Brainhack” hackathon revealed that disagreement in neuroscience runs deeper than most researchers suspect—even in electrophysiology, a field that prides itself on hard data.

By Gaëlle Chapuis, Mattia Chini
1 June 2026 | 7 min read