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Maximillian Alvarez


Maximillian Alvarez began contributing to The Baffler in 2016 and is currently the author of a regular column titled “The Poverty of Theory.” He received his BA and graduated with Honors from the University of Chicago in 2009, then received an M.Phil at the University of Bristol in the UK in 2011. He is currently a dual-PhD candidate in the departments of History and Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan. He’s unapologetically socialist and obsessed with his cats.

Along with his contributions for The Baffler, Maximillian’s writing has been featured in a number of publications, including the Times Higher Education, the Los Angeles Review of Books, ROAR magazine, and Electric Literature. As a teacher, essayist, and agitator, his work focuses on bringing the basic skills of literary and historical study to bear on the weird contradictions of the the world of politics. 

While finishing his dissertation, Maximillian is currently working on a book of essays exploring the “literature of politics.” Drawing on a broad range of literary texts and tools of literary analysis, and covering topics from the possibility of American socialism to mass suicides and the Mall of America, these essays probe the essential (even horrifying) literariness of politics and the everyday, political value of literary thinking.

Follow him on Twitter @maximillian_alv.

May 16, 2018