Neta Alexander
Neta Alexander is an Assistant Professor of Film and Media at Yale University. Before coming to Yale, she taught at Colgate University and served as an Assistant Editor of Journal of Cinema and Media Studies (JCMS). She earned a PhD from New York University and a MA from Columbia University.
Her work focuses on digital culture, film and media, science and technology studies, and critical disability studies. Her analysis of buffering revealed the understudied ways in which latency and delay are inherent to digital systems and infrastructures. Her first book, Failure (Polity, 2020), co-authored with Arjun Appadurai, reveals how Silicon Valley and Wall Street monetize failure and forgetfulness. Her second book, Interface Frictions (Duke University Press, forthcoming), explores four ubiquitous interface design features—refresh, playback speed, autoplay, and Night Shift—to develop a theory of digital debility. Taken together, these case studies demonstrate what can be gained from placing the non-average user at the center of media history.
Prof. Alexander’s articles appeared in Journal of Visual Culture, Cinema Journal, Cinergie, Film Quarterly, Media Fields Journal, and Flow Journal, among other publications. She also contributed chapters to the anthologies The Netflix Effect (Bloomsbury, 2016), Compact Cinematics (Bloomsbury, 2017), Pandemic Media (Mason Press, 2021), Technics (University of Amsterdam, 2024), In/Convenience: Inhabiting the Logistical Surround (Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2024) and Disability Media Studies (NYU Press, forthcoming). Her public scholarship, encompassing topics such as the Internet of Medical Things, predictive personalization, and the limitations of technology, has been published in the Atlantic, Public Books, Real Life Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, and Haaretz. Her writing has been translated into German, Slovenian, French, Italian, and Portuguese.