About

I am a cultural and intellectual historian focusing on radical thought and the recovery of the classics in early modern Europe, especially the Italian Renaissance. I am an Associate Professor in the History Department of the University of Chicago, with affiliations in Classics, Gender Studies, Fundamentals, and the Institute on the Formation of Knowledge. I work on the history of science, religion, heresy, freethought, atheism, censorship, books, printing, and the networks of money and power that enable cultural production. My current research focuses on censorship during information revolutions, and how studying the print revolution can help lawmakers and corporations make wiser choices during the digital revolution,. My first academic book Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance (HUP, 2014) explores the impact of the rediscovery of classical atomism on the birth of modern thought. I am disabled (chronic pain) and a disability activist, and work a lot on mentoring, healthy work habits, self-care, universal design, and inclusive pedagogy, including working with the RSA mentoring committee.  I also work a lot with experimental pedagogy, especially gamification, role-play, creative writing, and material reconstruction projects as tools for teaching history.

Separately, I am a science fiction and fantasy novelist, author of the award-winning Terra Ignota series beginning with Too Like the Lightning (Tor Books), which explores a twenty-fifth civilization of voluntary citizenship and borderless nations, written in the a style of an eighteenth-century philosophical novel. I am a composer, study and publish on anime and manga, work as a consultant for anime and manga publishers, blog for Tor.com, and write the philosophy and travel blog ExUrbe.com.