Selected Articles



what the "crisis" of social skills is really about (the April issue cover story)

can behavior therapy teach us to feel better?

"You Really Like Me" (The Baffler, 2024)
the death of "likability" as a center-liberal aesthetic

"Boundary Issues" (Parapraxis Magazine, 2023)
what's up with "personal boundaries," anyway?

"Boundaries are suddenly everywhere. What does the term actually mean?" (The Guardian, 2023)

slightly shorter, less nerdy version of the Parapraxis essay

"Good, Likeable People Who Love Each Other" (Post45 Contemporaries, 2020)

on friendship, by way of BoJack Horseman

"Distantiated Communities" (Cabinet, 2020)

the history of "social distancing"

"The Surprisingly Deep—and Often Troubling—History of ‘Social Distancing’" (Time, 2020)

interview with Time Magazine about Cabinet article

"Remedial Art History for the German Far-Right" (Cabinet, 2019)

Orientalism turns up in far-right campaign aesthetics

"Fire and Brimstone in Southeast Chicago" (Belt, 2022) 

on a neon pile of sulfur in the Rust Belt

"'I Am Talking to the Part of You that Does Not Speak'" (Harvard Magazine, 2021)

Laurie Anderson's six Zoom Norton lectures