Faculty Spotlight—Assistant Professor Dr. Alex Beasley!
We asked Dr. Alex Beasley (he/him) a few questions about his research and how he uses American Studies as a discipline, what got him here, and what he loves about American Studies at UT! Continue reading to learn more!
Q: What are you research interests, both academic and for fun!?
A: I’m interested in where capitalism and American culture intersect. That can mean a lot of things. How is our sense of community and identity shaped through being workers and consumers? How does our race, our class, our gender, or our sexuality shape how we understand economic life – and how do those categories shape how economic exchange functions? And what assumptions and beliefs do we hold about how markets work – and how they should work? Essentially, I want to know about where capitalism meets our daily lives.
Q: What is the nature of your work? What method(s) do you utilize the most? How does your work align with American Studies?
A: Right now, I’m finishing up my first book, which looks at the Texas oil industry after World War II. I’m tracing the rise of oilfield services companies, which specialized in offering consulting and expertise to oil companies rather than owning oilfields themselves. I’m arguing that this model became an increasingly important one in Texas by the 1960s and helped reshape the Texas oil industry. This had economic effects but also cultural ones. The centrality of expertise and service helped to shift ideas about masculinity, race, authority, and the role of the United States on the world stage.
Like a lot of American Studies scholars, my methods are varied. I do a lot of archival research, and I often do close reading of images and films as a part of my method. I have also done some work in mapping through GIS and have done some work with statistical data.
Q: Are you currently working on any projects, and if so tell us about them!
A: I’m finishing up my Texas book, but I’m also in the very early stages of a new project on real estate investment and shifting understandings of housing and the family after the 1960s.
Q: How did you come to American Studies as a discipline?
A: When I was an undergraduate, I told my advisor I wished I could create a major that blended history and literature – that studied literary narrative to better understand the past, and that examined historical events in relation to artistic representation. I didn’t want to just study literature and history – I wanted to study how the two intersected. She informed me I hadn’t invented something – I was just talking about American Studies. Unfortunately, my undergraduate institution didn’t have an American Studies department, but I was lucky to find my academic home as a graduate student and now as faculty at UT.
Q: How does American Studies make your work possible?
A: I often find that the kinds of questions that most motivate me are in the spaces between disciplines. American Studies didn’t just let me ask these questions – it encouraged that I do so!
Q: What is your favorite thing about AMS at UT?
A: Where to begin? We have an incredible group of faculty, staff, graduate students, and undergrads here. It genuinely feels like every single one of us is excited to share ideas with each other. There is a lot of energy, excitement, and empathy here.
Bonus Q: What is a fun fact about you that you would like your colleagues, peers, and students to know about you?
A: I spend so much time reading and writing for work, so when I can I like to create something that feels very material and physically grounded. I dabble in craftwork, baking, building things, and generally learning new skills – I like having something physically manifest that I can point to when my work feels a bit too ephemeral.
