Clips
History & Politics
History & Memory
- “Did Helen Keller Really ‘Do All That’?” (Slate, February 26, 2021)
- “Hatred Set in Stone” (on Georgia’s Stone Mountain) (Slate, July 8, 2020)
- “1917 Turns History’s Most Pointless War Into A Tale of Individual Heroism” (Slate, January 23, 2020)
- “If ‘Living History’ Role-Plays in the Classroom Can So Easily Go Wrong, Why Do Teachers Keep Assigning Them?” (Slate, May 20, 2019)
- “Who Were The Pinkertons?” (Slate, February 1, 2019)
- “Against ‘Generations'” (Aeon Magazine, May 19, 2015)
- “Letters of Note: The Internet’s Idea of History” (Virginia Quarterly Review, Fall 2014)
Little-Known Histories
- “The Real Story Behind Margot Robbie’s Wild Queen Elizabeth Makeup” (Slate, December 6, 2018)
- “Two, Four, Six, Eight, Who Do We Appreciate?: A Modern History of Childhood, in One Postgame Cheer” (Slate, June 4, 2018)
- “America’s Lost History of Border Violence” (Slate, May 5, 2016)
- “Andrew Jackson’s Adopted Indian Son” (Slate, April 29, 2016)
- “America’s Other Original Sin” (Slate, January 18, 2016)
- “Boyhood: The Drawings of the 19th-Century Nelson Brothers” (Slate, May 28, 2015)
Parenting & Childhood
- “Playing Good Cop” (a history of the Officer Friendly program) (Slate, August 27, 2020)
- “Who Are Feminist Baby Books For?” (Slate, October 7, 2019)
- “When Did Child Leashes Become Socially Unacceptable?” (Slate, August 5, 2019)
- “The Modern Expectation We Should Pretend-Play With Our Children Is Exhausting. Is There A Better Way?” (Slate, March 6, 2019)
- “The Troubling Thing About the ‘Fit Mom’ Instagram Community” (Slate, January 18, 2019)
- “Avoiding The Scourge of a Million Crappy Plastic Toys” (Slate, January 16, 2018)
- “Your Childcare Conundrum is an Anti-Communist Plot” (Slate, June 14, 2017)
- “An Ode to Green Slime” (The Atlantic.com, February 6, 2015)
- “Honey, You’re Scaring the Kids” (The Appendix, July 22, 2014)
Q&As
- “‘Immunoprivilege’ During a Pandemic Is As Dangerous As the Disease” (Slate, August 4, 2020)
- “The 1918 Flu Killed Millions. So Why Does Its Cultural Memory Feel So Faint?” (Slate, May 3, 2020)
- “The Photojournalist Behind the Viral Ohio Statehouse Protestors’ Photo Doesn’t Like the ‘Zombie’ Memes” (Slate, April 16, 2020)
- “Why Dickinson Turns A Teenage Poet Into A Sex-Obsessed Rebel” (Slate, October 30, 2019)
- “Dismantling the Myth of the ‘Black Confederate'” (Slate, August 30, 2019)
- “A Hamilton Skeptic on Why the Show Isn’t As Revolutionary As It Seems” (Slate, April 5, 2016)
Gender
- “A Modern Feminist Classic Changed My Life. Was It Actually Garbage?” (Slate, March 30, 2021)
- “‘I’ve Never Wanted To Be Told What To Do'” (on the resignation of CrossFit’s Greg Glassman) (Slate, June 12, 2020)
- “The Long Cultural History of Jokes About Workplace Sexual Harassment” (Slate, December 19, 2017)
- “How America’s Preference For Boys Over Women Has Fueled The Rise of Trump” (Slate, October 28, 2016)
- “America Has Always Seen Ambitious Women As Unhealthy” (Slate, September 16, 2016)
- “How ‘She Just Wants Attention’ Became America’s Hottest Sexist Insult” (Slate, April 4, 2016)
- “The Warped World of Marriage Advice Before Feminism” (Aeon Magazine, September 8, 2014)
Climate & Culture
Cooking & Food
Movies
Books
- “There Is No Parenting Utopia” (review of Hunt, Gather, Parent, by Michaeleen Doucleff) (Slate, March 6, 2021)
- “Why So Many Readers Are Turning to Octavia Butler’s Apocalypse Fiction Right Now” (Slate, September 19, 2020)
- “On the Sexist Reception of Willa Cather’s WWI Novel” (LitHub, October 23, 2019)
- “No Man’s Land” (review of The Pioneers, by David McCullough) (Slate, May 10, 2019)
- “Works of Prepper Fiction Reveal A Dark Truth About American Virtues” (Slate, October 6, 2016)
- “Is History Written About Men, By Men?” (Slate, January 6, 2016)
Personal Essays
- “My Daughter Is Obsessed With Gaston From Beauty and the Beast” (Slate, April 8, 2021)
- “My Toddler Is Extremely Creepy. Should I Be Worried?” (Slate, October 30, 2020)
- “An Ode To ‘The Moms'” (Slate, May 9, 2019)
- “My Mom, Mary Oliver, Fancy Smart People, and Me” (Slate, January 17, 2019)
- “(French!) Kissing the Teen Mag Goodbye” (Slate, November 16, 2018)
- “That Burt Reynolds Cosmo Centerfold Was a Game-Changer for My Teenage Self” (Slate, September 7, 2019)
