Alexis A. Ferguson (they/them) is a PhD candidate in the Department of English and certificate candidate in the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies. Their research interests include British literature and culture in the long nineteenth century, queer and trans theory, narration and narrative theory, history of sex and sexuality, and feminist science studies. Their doctoral thesis, “Making Cis: Sex in Nineteenth-Century Britain,” examines mid- to late-nineteenth-century physiological and sexological texts alongside realist novels to develop a method of reading Victorian sex apart from cisnormativity. Major themes include scientific developments that prefigure the modern, cis-gendered body, narrative forms that construct sex before and beyond cisness, and the critical histories of Victorian, feminist, queer, and trans studies. Their published writing can be found in Gender & History, Victorian Literature and Culture, and Victorian Review. Alexis also holds an M.A. in English from Princeton University (2020) and a B.A. in English from Cornell University (2017), and won the North American Victorian Studies Association’s Sally Mitchell Prize for best paper presented by a graduate student at the 2022 conference.

Alexis has taught several courses in the Department of English, Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Program in American Studies, including “19th-Century Fiction” and “Introduction to Gender and Sexuality Studies.” They also served as a Graduate Mentor in Princeton’s ReMatch and ReMatch+ programs, funded by the Office of Undergraduate Research, and as a Graduate Teacher at Dickens Universe, hosted by University of California, Santa Cruz. In addition to their research and teaching, Alexis serves as co-organizer of the Victorian Colloquium and has previously co-organized the Gender and Sexuality Studies Graduate Reading Group at Princeton.