Alex Walton

A professional headshot of Junior Fellow Alex Walton

English

 

B.A. University of Washington

M.F.A. Iowa Writers’ Workshop

Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley

 

On leave 2026-27

 

Photo courtesy of Mark James Dunn

I work on early modern literature, especially in and around the English Revolution (1640–1660), and the varieties of antiformalism, religious and aesthetic, that precede as well as emerge from it. Beyond the early modern I am interested in the intersection of linguistics and poetics; marxism and the long history of capitalism; and contemporary poetry. I received my PhD in English from UC Berkeley in 2025, and, some years before that, a B.A. from the University of Washington. In between, I did an M.F.A. in poetry at the University of Iowa. 

“A Useless Pyramid: Figure and Surplus in William Petty’s Treatise of Taxes.” MLQ 86, no. 1 (Spring 2025): 31–57.

"Milton and Some Extemporaries." Forthcoming in ELH 93, no. 2 (Summer 2026).