Alexander J. Motyl

Motyl is also active as a poet, a writer of fiction, and a visual artist. His poems have appeared in "Vanishing Points" (2016). His novels include "Ardor" (2016), "Vovochka" (2015), Fall River (2014), Sweet Snow (2013), My Orchidia (2012), The Jew Who Was Ukrainian (2011), Flippancy (2009), Who Killed Andrei Warhol (2007), and Whiskey Priest (2005). He has done readings of his fiction and poetry at New York's Cornelia Street Café and Bowery Poetry Club. Motyl has had one-man shows of his art in New York, Toronto, Philadelphia, and Westport. His art work may be seen on www.alexmotyl.com.

In 2008–2014, he collaborated with former Andy Warhol Superstar Ultra Violet on a play entitled Andy vs. Adolf, which attempted to explore the similarities and differences between Warhol and Hitler. Although two readings of the play took place, the work was never produced. Motyl subsequently described his working relationship with Ultra Violet in an essay in the magazine 34th Parallel.

Motyl has written extensively on the Soviet Union, Ukraine, revolutions, nations and nationalism, and empire. All his work is highly conceptual and theoretical, attempting to ground political science in a firm philosophical base, while simultaneously concluding that all theories are imperfect and that theoretical pluralism is inevitable. In 2001 in Imperial Ends he posited a theoretical framework for examining the structure of empires as a political structure. He makes use of the standard model that geographic and political areas are constituted by a core and a periphery. The empire's structure relates the core elite to the peripheral elite in a mutually beneficial fashion that can be established through any number of means: aggressive, coercive, or consensual. And while there is a vertical relationship between the core and periphery, there is a lack of substantive relations between periphery and periphery.

Motyl's parents immigranted from Lviv, Ukraine. He graduated from Regis High School in New York City in 1971. He studied at Columbia University, graduating with a BA in History in 1975 and a Ph.D. in Political Science in 1984. Motyl has taught at Columbia University, Lehigh University, and Harvard University and is currently professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark.

Alexander John Motyl (Ukrainian: Олександр Мотиль ; born October 21, 1953, in New York City) is an American historian, political scientist, poet, writer, translator and artist-painter. He is a resident of New York City. He is professor of political science at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey and specialist on Ukraine, Russia, and the Soviet Union.