Memoir
“How to Learn Everything: The MasterClass Diaries.” Longreads, August 20, 2020.
- Included in The 25 Most Popular Longreads Exclusives of 2020.
“Someone is Wrong on the Internet: A Study in Pandemic Distraction.” Literary Hub, June 19, 2020.
- Included in The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
- Featured on ArtsJournal
- Featured in BmoreArt’s The Internet is Exploding: 10 Must-Read Articles This Week
“Home truths: A dispatch from Germany.” The Times Literary Supplement, April 24, 2020.
- Part of the Times Literary Supplement‘s “Lockdown around the world” series
“O limbă lipită de cerul gurii.” Scena9 2 (2019-20): 192-197.
“Reading Lessons.” How We Read: Tales, Fury, Nothing, Sound. Eds. Kaitlin Heller and Suzanne Conklin Akbari. Brooklyn: Punctum Books, 2019. 1-11.
- Reprinted in Longreads.
- Listed among the “Notable Essays and Literary Nonfiction of 2019” in The Best American Essays 2020, eds. André Aciman and Robert Atwan.
- Included in The 25 Most Popular Longreads Exclusives of 2019.
- Featured in Vox’s weekly roundup of best writing on books.
- Featured in Arts & Letters Daily’s Articles of Note.
- Featured in BmoreArt’s The Internet is Exploding: 10 Must-Read Articles This Week
- Featured in Cărturești’s weekly roundup.
“The Kid Is All Right: In Defense of Picky Eating.” Serious Eats, February 13, 2018.
- Featured in Longreads: “You Don’t Have to Eat It,” by Catherine Cusick.
- Included in the Top 5 Longreads of the Week.
- Included in Autostraddle’s Things I Read That I Love #257.
- Featured in Omni.se.
- Translated into Chinese by Chunhui Li. Posted with permission here.
“An Unreliable Alchemy.” The Marginalia Review of Books, November 10, 2017.
“Swan, Late: The Unexpected Joys of Adult Beginner Ballet.” Longreads. February 7, 2017.
- Included in Genia Blum’s “Essays of the Decade,” on Queen Mob’s Review of the Decade, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, December 28, 2019.
- Listed among the “Notable Essays and Literary Nonfiction of 2017” in The Best American Essays 2018, eds. Hilton Als and Robert Atwan. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018.
“The Things We Take, The Things We Leave Behind.” Southwest Review 101.1 (2016): 13-29.
- Winner of a McGinnis-Ritchie Award for nonfiction from the Southwest Review.
- Published in Romanian as “Lucrurile pe care le luăm cu noi, lucrurile pe care le lăsăm în urmă,” translated by Iulia Gorzo, in Scena9, September 30, 2019.
- Featured in Scena9‘s 2019 “Un calendar ilustrat.”
- Listed among the “Notable Essays and Literary Nonfiction of 2016” in Best American Essays 2017, eds. Leslie Jamison and Robert Atwan. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017.
- Nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
“Dance, Mama.” The Manifest-Station. September 26, 2015.
“My Father and the Wine.” The Yale Review 103.2 (2015): 51-64.
- Reprinted in Wine Reads: A Literary Anthology of Wine Writing, ed. Jay McInerney. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2018. 295-309.
- Reprinted in The Best American Essays 2016, eds. Jonathan Franzen and Robert Atwan. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016. 56-68.
- Nominated for the MFK Fisher Distinguished Writing Award, from the James Beard Foundation, March 2016.
- Translated into Chinese by Chunhui Li. Posted with permission here.
- Featured in the Longreads roundup Six James Beard Finalists You Might Have Missed: A Reading List
- Audio version featured in Choice Magazine Listening’s Fall 2015 issue.
“Currywurst.” Petits Propos Culinaires 98 (2013): 71-77.
“Tasting Texas.” Southwest Review 97.1 (2012): 54-62.
- Listed among the “Notable Essays of 2012” in The Best American Essays 2013, eds. Cheryl Strayed and Robert Atwan. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013.
Essays
“Get medieval on your haters: lessons from Beowulf and Chaucer.” Psyche, November 17, 2020.
“Heroism should not be part of the academic job description.” Times Higher Education, October 29, 2020.
“We’re all Jessica Rabbit Now. Self-fashioning for the YouTube generation.” Times Literary Supplement, October 21, 2020.
“Time to Get Over Your Discomfort With Book Marketing.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 16, 2020.
“Struggling to exercise upward toxicity? Try toxic hypocrisy.” Times Higher Education, September 16, 2020.
“What Academics Misunderstand About ‘Public Writing’.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 2, 2020.
“The Demon of Distraction.” With Caleb Smith. In the Moment (Critical Inquiry blog), April 22, 2020.
- Reprinted at Times of COVID-19.
“Ten rules for succeeding in academia through upward toxicity.” Times Higher Education, November 21, 2019.
- Times Higher Education’s most-read article of 2019.
- Featured on History News Network‘s Roundup Top 10.
- Translated into Spanish as “Diez reglas para tener éxito en el mundo académico a través de la toxicidad ascendente.”
“‘Bio-Nazis’ go green in Germany.” Politico Europe, July 12, 2018.
“Teachers and Students.” Aeon, February 7, 2018.
- Included in the Tampa Bay Times’ The Reading File.
“Appetite (and iron-clad stomach) for success. The art of stuffing yourself while chancellor.” Politico.eu, June 17, 2017.
“The Curious Appeal of ‘Bad’ Food.” The Atlantic, August 5, 2016.
- Reprinted in Best Food Writing 2017, ed. Holly Hughes. New York: Da Capo Press, 2017. 7-12.
“‘Frivolous’ Humanities Helped Prisoners Survive in Communist Romania.” Zócalo Public Square, May 25, 2016.
- Featured among Editors’ Picks on Discover
- One of Zócalo Public Square’s 12 Favorite Essays of 2016, December 2016
“War and the Food of Dreams: An Interview with Cara De Silva.” Rumba Under Fire: The Arts of Survival from West Point to Delhi, ed. Irina Dumitrescu. Brooklyn: Punctum Books, 2016. 53-77.
“Terpsichore.” Rumba Under Fire: The Arts of Survival from West Point to Delhi, ed. Irina Dumitrescu. Brooklyn: Punctum Books, 2016. 197-199.
“Why ‘that’ photo mattered this time: Our children could be on that beach, too.” On Parenting for the Washington Post. September 8, 2015.
“On the Future of Old English.” Guest post at In the Middle, January 2014.
“The School’s Embrace.” This Book is a Class Room, eds. Lucie Kolb and Romy Rüegger. Berlin: Passenger Books and HIT, 2012. 43-44.
- Responses by Sjoerd Westbroek and Tanja Baudoin.
“Hidden Treasures at the Met Museum.” Guest post at In the Middle, July 2009.
Criticism
“Dudes Without Heirs.” New York Review of Books, December 3, 2020.
“Time travelling in comfort.” Times Literary Supplement, November 27, 2020.
“How to Read Aloud.” London Review of Books, September 10, 2020.
- Audio version by Audm.
“In Praise of Solitude.” Los Angeles Review of Books, June 28, 2020.
- Featured in Arts and Letters Daily’s New Books section.
- One of LARB‘s 15 most-read pieces of 2020.
“Making My Moan.” London Review of Books, May 7, 2020.
- Featured in Longreads, “The Function and Language of Ancient Sexual Texts,” by Aaron Gilbreath
- Included in Longreads‘ “This Week in Books“
“Quiet magic: The best ways to cultivate good writing.” The Times Literary Supplement (lead cover story), March 6, 2020.
- Featured in Longreads, “Teaching Writing and Breaking Rules,” by Aaron Gilbreath.
“Theater of War.” The New York Times, February 12, 2020.
“Cooking as a profound art.” The Times Literary Supplement, December 20 and 27, 2019.
“Heel turns.” The Times Literary Supplement (lead cover story), September 20, 2019.
- Featured in Longreads, “A Close Look at the Thing We Call ‘Celebrity’,” by Aaron Gilbreath.
- Featured in Arts & Letters Daily’s Essays & Opinions.
- Featured on Perlentaucher.de, Magazinrundschau
- Featured in BmoreArt’s The Internet is Exploding: 10 Must-Read Articles This Week
- Published in Latvian as “Slaveni ar to, ka ir slaveni,” in Rigas Laiks, February 2020.
- Included among the Times Literary Supplement‘s September 2019 Highlights
“Door Open for Beauty: On Deborah Tobola’s “Hummingbird in Underworld: Teaching in a Men’s Prison, a Memoir.” Los Angeles Review of Books, August 2, 2019.
“Renaissance Man.” The New York Times, June 2, 2019.
- Published in Spanish as “Memorial de los libros naufragados,” in El Cultural, November 11, 2019.
“Physical, cultural, personal: The demands of dance.” The Times Literary Supplement (lead cover story), February 1, 2019.
“Hunger Games: Three Memoirs Where Food Takes Center Stage.” The New York Times, January 6, 2019.
“Literature as Lifeline: The Exile in “Call Me Zebra”.” Los Angeles Review of Books, March 18, 2018.
Smaller Contributions
“Old love, new tricks.” (In Brief review of Tristan & Isolde, newly translated by William Whobrey). Times Literary Supplement, December 4, 2020.
“Homely ceremonies.” (In Brief review of How to Cook a Wolf, by MFK Fisher). Times Literary Supplement, October 30, 2020.
“Dance Macabre.” (In Brief review of What You Become In Flight, by Ellen O’Connell Whittet) The Times Literary Supplement, May 1, 2020.
“Life in the Zoomiverse: What we miss about the physical campus.” Times Higher Education, April 30, 2020.
“Dance.” (In Brief review of Isadora, by Julie Birmant and Clément Oubrerie) The Times Literary Supplement, April 17, 2020.
“Should you be working 100 hours a week?” Times Higher Education, February 20, 2020.
“Electric conversations: Twenty-five writers reflect on the magazines and journals they have enjoyed over the years.” Times Literary Supplement, October 25, 2019.
“Old English” (In Brief review of Undoing Babel: The Tower of Babel in Anglo-Saxon Literature, by Tristan Major). The Times Literary Supplement, January 11, 2019.
Longreads Best of 2018: Food Writing.
Longreads Best of 2017: Food Writing.
“About the Cover.” postmedieval 8.3 (2017): 267–269.
(With Berit Andersson) “Research Fellowships in Germany for Scholars in the Humanities.” Guest post at In the Middle, November 8, 2016.
“A Place of Absence, Loss, and Transcendence.” Part of a Zócalo Public Square conversation on “Why Libraries’ Survival Matters.” September 29, 2016.
“Dancing for Humanity.” fuse. A Tribal & Fusion Belly Dance Magazine 15 (2015): 11-12.