Dr Alexandra Tankard
Senior Lecturer
Biography
Dr Alex Tankard is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Chester. They teach undergraduate and postgraduate modules on nineteenth-century literature and culture, critical theory, and representation of disability, eugenics, and queer histories. Alex designed a new module exploring representations of communities of liberation and protest across a range of literature and different media over four centuries. They supervise research dissertations at undergraduate, Masters, and Doctoral level, and they are involved in outreach activities with schools.
Teaching and Supervision
Alex teaches literature and culture across the long nineteenth-century, literary disability studies and queer theory across different media and periods, and the Gothic.
Research and Knowledge Exchange
With a background in literary disability studies, Alex’s research includes representations of tuberculosis and disability in nineteenth-century culture, and they appeared as a consultant in a BBC4 documentary about Aubrey Beardsley. More recent research includes disability and eugenics in superhero movies, Romantic Satanism in Good Omens, and disability in screen representations of 1700s pirates. They are currently writing a book on queer, neurodivergent, villainous asexuality in literature and television.