Other Writing

I wanted to be a writer before I wanted to be anything else, and I’ve been writing and publishing online for most of my life. While I’ve chosen an academic path, I have to confess that much of the writing that is most exciting to me is the kind of theoretically informed and politically engaged cultural criticism that straddles academic and popular audiences.

My career as a writer began during my undergraduate years, when I wrote music reviews and cultural criticism for Stylus Magazine, a now-defunct website started by my college pal Todd Burns. Most of this writing exists only in web archives; a few citations on Wikipedia entries for Ghostface Killah and Britney Spears still refer to old articles of mine, which is a wonderful legacy.

After that, I blogged during the days when that was prominent, until a young college student dropped me an email to see if I’d write about music and film for a political magazine he was starting. This magazine, Jacobin, ended up doing quite well, and I’m proud to have been there from the very first issue. My most widely read article at Jacobin was my reflection on gentrification in DC, located here.

I also helped two brilliant graduate students, Asad Haider and Salar Mohandesi, get their political and theoretical publication, Viewpoint Magazine, off the ground during the heady days of the Occupy movement. I’m happy to say it’s continuing to do great things. I’ve published a few pieces there, and contributed quite a bit on the editorial side.

Below is a partial list of publications for non-academic outlets.

The Full Automation Fallacy [Futures of Work, 2020]

The Palace of the Future Is Nearly Complete [Commune, 2019]

This Is Everywhere [Popula, 2018]

Microsoft and the Yeoman Coders [Jacobin, 2018]

No Alternative [Real Life Magazine, 2018; republished in Adbusters]

What is a Struggalo? Inquiry at the Juggalo March [Viewpoint Magazine]

Bad and Bourgeois [Jacobin, 2017]

The Racial Politics of Zootopia [Medium, 2017]

Droning On [Jacobin, 2016]

Shackling the Masses With Drastic Capitalist Tactics [Jacobin, 2015]

It’s All About a Salary [Jacobin, 2015]