About

José Alaniz is a Professor in the Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures at the University of Washington, serving as the Graduate Program Coordinator and Interim Chair for the academic year 2025-2026. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 2003. His fields of interest include 20th Century Comics, Comparative Literature, Culture, Disability, Ecocriticism, Film/Cinema, Russian Biography, and related areas. Alaniz has authored significant works such as 'Death, Disability and the Superhero: The Silver Age and Beyond' and 'Komiks: Comic Art in Russia,' contributing to the understanding of comics and visual culture in Slavic contexts. His research often explores themes of disability, representation, and cultural history within Russian and broader Slavic media, including comics and cinema. Alaniz actively teaches courses on Russian literature and culture, and his scholarly activities include reviewing, interviewing, and engaging with contemporary Slavic media and cultural productions.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• History
• Literature
• Political Science
• Art
• Psychoanalysis
• Psychology
• Law
• Philosophy
• Linguistics

Selected publications

• Bridging the Gap in Resource Disparities: Joint Efforts of an Academic Medical Center and a Community Safety Net Hospital to Enhance Transplant Outcomes for Underserved Communities

  American Journal of Transplantation · 2025-08-01

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Muscle memory: a survivor’s story

  Journal of Graphic Novels & Comics · 2025-04-23

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Post-Soviet Gothic and the Eastern European zombie

  Manchester University Press eBooks · 2025-06-16

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Treating the zombie figure as a symbol of the ‘corpse of the Soviet world’, the chapter investigates fascinating cases of post-USSR cultural production from Russia, Hungary, and Czechia to demonstrate how Eastern European authors and artists use this framework to position themselves against challenging the Soviet legacy. Using other tropes characteristic of horror, such as witchcraft, demonology, Final Girl, or contagion in the work of, for example, Yegor Abramenko or Josef Bolf, the author reflects upon difficult reworking of the region’s past and present, suggesting that in many cases the relationship with the Soviet heritage occurs through nostalgia. The chapter is composed partly of reviews which appeared in KinoKultura.

  PublisherDOI

• Comics of the Anthropocene

  University Press of Mississippi eBooks · 2025-06-15 · 1 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Community Resource Disparity as a Predictor of Renal Transplant Outcomes: A Collaboration Between Community and Academic Medical Centers

  American Journal of Transplantation · 2025-08-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Knee and Ankle Kinematics Differences During Walking in Schoolchildren with Different Body Weights. A Cross-Sectional Study

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Ankle Movement Alterations During Gait in Children with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia with Suspected Peripheral Mononeuropathy. A Cross-Sectional Study

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Okraina and “Oil Ontology” in Post-Soviet Russian Cinema

  Berghahn Books · 2023-10-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Chapter 9. Okraina and “Oil Ontology” in Post-Soviet Russian Cinema

  Berghahn Books · 2023-10-10

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• General Introduction:

  Universitaire Pers Leuven eBooks · 2023 · 1 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Maxim Marusenkov

  Moscow State University

  22 shared

• Mark Lipovetsky

  11 shared

• Manuela Kovalev

  Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences

  11 shared

• Lisa Ryoko Wakamiya

  11 shared

• Martin Paulsen

  University of Bergen

  11 shared

• Nariman Skakov

  11 shared

• Dirk Uffelmann

  11 shared

• Ingunn Lunde

  University of Bergen

  11 shared

Awards & honors

• Field research grant, staffer’s play streams, cartoon rememb…
• José Alaniz selected to be recognized at the Latinx Faculty…