Writing
A selection of my published writings over the years.
The Perils of Academic Potential
Catapult
“Human beings are all full of multiple potentials, but our picture of potential is limited by our assumptions. It is typically applied to people who have already done something that demonstrates that potential. It assumes intelligence, another word crackling with unsettled meaning. It relies on an idea of success measured by existing successes, and it also relies on demographics. I’m constantly excavating my own potential, unpacking it, trying to see where I’ve gone wrong and where I’ve gone right. I’m constantly questioning the foundations of that potential. It’s individual, but it exists in a context.”
How Lolly Willowes Smashed the Patriarchy by Selling Her Soul to Satan
Electric Literature
“Gender under patriarchy can’t help but harm women. It harms men, too, but it offers particular benefits that make that harm worthwhile for a whole lot of men. Gender under capitalist patriarchy is necessarily impossible. It isn’t a coincidence that gendered expectations are contradictory. The contradictions make it impossible to fulfill those expectations, and the impossibility places it always just out of reach, fixable with the right product, new look, new attitude, new behavior. For women under capitalist patriarchy, failing to fulfill gendered expectations is financially punished, but, crucially, so is fulfilling those expectations reasonably well. You might get the job or the marriage by being attractive and tidy and correctly female, but the rise to authority and true ownership of wealth is unlikely to follow. Fulfilling femininity to the satisfaction of men is nearly always an argument against your own potential.”
I Saw CATS
Blog post at Medium
“When I heard the words “Heaviside Layer,” I did not know what they meant, but since it seemed to be a cat afterlife of sorts, I pictured a place filled with heavy foods that cats like: goose fat, and pâtés of various sorts, and heavy cream. Later, I looked up “Heaviside layer,” and firstly it is real, and secondly it is a layer of ionized gas in the ionosphere, located 56 to 93 miles above the earth. In the Catsiverse, the cats know about the ionosphere and, I guess, Oliver Heaviside, for whom the layer is named, and the cats desire, more than anything, to go 56 to 93 miles above the earth. I would not know this until well after the movie, though.”
A Case for Studying the Humanities in a Time of Neo-Fascism
Catapult
“Understanding the difference between intent and impact is an important part of studying text, whether that text is a book, a speech, or a disinformation campaign. I study eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature, a subject that sounds remote, precious, and distant from my current place and time. When I say I study the Victorian era, most people have one of two responses: They admire the aesthetic of the period, or they expect me to share in their despair that no one reads the great Victorian classics anymore. But I’m not a fan of the aesthetic; I fell into studying this period because I hadn’t read much of it.”
It’s Time to Talk About Wolf Girls
Electric Literature
“When girls show up in most human wolf stories, they do so as prey. Whatever girls want, it cannot be food or sex. They cannot embody appetite. And yet girls do want, and sometimes the Wolf Girl sneaks into view, however much the wolf trope may align with men.”
Two Tweets
blog post at Medium
“After the election that enshrined his brand-name bigotry as the future of the U.S., one of Donald Trump’s first tweets said, ‘Just had a very open and successful presidential election. Now professional protesters, incited by the media, are protesting. Very unfair!’ Nine hours later, a second, modulated tweet appeared under his name. It said, ‘Love the fact that the small groups of protesters last night have passion for our great country. We will all come together and be proud!’”
The Terrible Power of White Women’s Fears in Donald Trump’s Campaign
The Establishment
“Fear of crime centers white innocence; white innocence centers white women and children. Fear of crime also endangers people in bodies that aren’t automatically seen as innocent. And the fears of and for white women can be deadly. In 2015, before the terrorist Dylann Roof murdered six Black women and three Black men in Charleston, he told them, ‘You rape our women.’ This is a statement of ownership and blame, of false knowledge and proactive violence. You are outside of us: our women are not your women. Women are possessions. You are violent, inherently, so you must be subject to violence. There’s a lot packed into four murderous words: American history condensed down to its purest, ugliest expression.”
I Got a Nose Job to Escape My Past
Archipelago
“I suppose you could say that no one suggested my nose job to me, either – but then again, no one had to. It was enough to know that it was an option, to have it always in front of me as a possible solution to a problem of my own making. To be honest, I don’t think anyone ever made fun of my nose. I don’t think there was anyone but me staring at it from the side, wishing it concave instead of convex. And when, in seventh grade, I burst into tears and said that I hated my nose, that I wished it were different, my mom heard her own voice echoing down through the years. It was obvious what needed to be done.”
Going Home With Ken Kesey
Archipelago
“Indignities are aggregate entities. Each, on its own, seems small, but as they increase in number, they become monsters. I know there’s nothing new about this, but in the moment, pregnant, navigating an unfamiliar world in which I occupied a space of shame, it felt like my boyfriend and I were the only people inside that crushingly small plot of ground. If we had friends and art, I thought, it would be better, even if we didn’t have money or, sometimes, dignity. We knew Oakland had to have an art community like the one we’d left behind in Baltimore, but we didn’t know how to find it. Daniel was looking for a job and I couldn’t paint because all of the materials I typically used were now nausea-inducing nightmares. I felt cut off.”
Suggested Activities for Convalescing After a Long Illness
with Christian McMahon
The Toast
“Dedicate yourself to finally creating the Smokey the Bear/Woodsy the Owl erotic fan fiction the world has been clamoring for.
Watch every British murder mystery show ever made. Lie still and listen to the soothing sounds of logical discussion, the chirping of sparrows in the rose garden, and the gentle squish-squashing of viscera when your ailment becomes overwhelming and you can no longer sit with eyes open.
Prop yourself up in the plaza: dispense optimistic, folksy wisdom to townsfolk whether they want to hear it or not.”
6 Top-Down Shawl Shapes that are All About the Increase
Craftsy
“Thank goodness for shawls: They’re practical (wrap ’em like a scarf in winter or wear as a lightweight layer in summer), don’t require any fitting, and come in so many shapes and sizes.
Take the top-down shawl, for example. You start with a small little handful of stitches and watch it grow. But that’s only the beginning — what you do with those increases can dramatically change your finished shawl. The rate of increase and placement of increases are what ultimately determine the shape.”
Lady Audley’s Secret: The Witch-President of the Tea Tray
The Toast
“The sensation novel transgressed class boundaries, attracting upper-class readers to lower-class values and the physical sensations of fear and excitement. Lady Audley’s imagined transgressions of class, rising from a governess to the lady of a baronet on false pretenses, played off of Victorian anxieties about the greater social mobility that was allowed by greater physical movement. People no longer lived in the same village where their parents and grandparents had grown up, and could you really know anything about a person if you hadn’t known them from birth? A person might choose to represent herself as innocent and respectful when in fact she was wanton and sinful.”
The Critical Conversation Created by the Choose Your Own Adventure Series, Based Entirely on Titles
The Toast
“100. The Worst Day of Your Life
Choose your own adventure, the series promises, but this title hisses that all choice leads to the realization of your most secret fears. Choose what you will. It is still the worst day of your life.”