Alexander Kaplan-Reyes is a historian of premodern Japanese history who researches the affectively rich ties of intimacy between warriors during the 16th and 17th centuries. Through his work, he seeks to reconsider the role of male-male relationships, including overtly sexual ones, in the construction of warrior retainer bands and the establishment of warrior alliances, as well as their influence on events that effected significant historical change at the macro level. He draws upon queer theory to search for traces of intimacy in a wide range of documents, including war chronicles, poetry, love oaths, and personal correspondence, that traditional, more heteronormatively-inclined approaches tend to overlook.

He is also interested in the history of female warriors in premodern Japan, the influence of Western sexology on twentieth-century understandings of the history of Japanese male-male intimacy and sexuality, and the ways in which popular culture shapes and is shaped by historical memory of Japan's Warring States Period (1467-1603).

Alexander Kaplan-Reyes completed his Ph.D. in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University in October 2022. He previously served as Early Career Fellow in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia for the 2022-2023 academic year. He is currently continuing research the relationship between the famous warlord Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582) and his page Mori Ranmaru (1565-1582), and how their bond represented expectations about a shared future together as lord and loyal retainer.