research overview
- Dr. Alexander's work focuses on narratives - historical, fictional, religious - and how in the midst of disaster some reformers of the late Qing wove stories about the world they hoped to rebuild for good, even as their faith in collective goodness, and its ability to be harnessed for moral (and socio-political) restoration, faltered. If society needed to be transformed, how could people be taught when ongoing disasters were signs that they had already failed to learn? Her forthcoming book (University of Michigan Press, 2025) addresses late Qing reformer Yu Zhi's collected writings, and the texts he inspired. Through his work, we encounter extraordinary efforts motivated by the fragile-seeming hope that words can save us as the world falls apart.