Research Areas

Writing Across Disciplines, Writing for a Public Audience, STS, History of Medicine, Gender Studies, Representations of the Biological Clock, Changing Fertility Patterns, Bioethics and Reproductive Technologies, Social Darwinism and its appropriations, Narrative Theory, Virginia Woolf.

Past (selected affiliations):

Gender Scholar & Chair of Scholars’ Program, Michelle Clayman Gender Institute (a.k.a IRWG), Stanford U.

Visiting Scholar, Beatrice Bain Research Group, Berkeley (led several “URAP” projects)

Post-doctoral Fellow, Stanford University (taught courses in writing, history of science, and comparative literature)

Selected Publications and Working Papers:

“The meaning of post-prime fatherhood” (tentative title), Times Literary Supplement. Forthcoming December 2016 or early 2017.

Editorial preface, Internet selves, automation, and algorithmic futures: the digital revolution at LARB (tentative title), Los Angeles: LARB, Winter 2016/17. Forthcoming.

Invited essay: “Thinking through Virginia Woolf: New Technologies and the Virtues of Leaning Sideways,” Virginia Woolf Miscellany, Winter 2015/2016, pp.22f.

On-going Ethnography/Working Paper on reproductive timing and “planned hindsight:” the articulation of strategic versus organic (reproductive) timing strategies amongst an undergraduate student population. 2016.

“Wired for Madness: A History” Los Angeles Review of Books (July, 2015).

Editorial preface, A Legible Science (Los Angeles, LARB, 2014).

“Éloge du singe qui joue,” (tr: In praise of apes who play). BOOKS: L’Actualité par les livres du Monde (Toulouse), July/August, 2014. No.56. (sp. volume: Turbulences).

“Crossing Jane Austen with Dawkins, ” Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology, 2013/14, 7 (4). Invited Essay/Commentary, pp. 297f.

“Susan Gubar’s Memoir of a Debulked Woman,” Times Literary Supplement, November 1, 2013.

“Maternity rescheduled,” Times Literary Supplement, July 2013.

“Consuming Midlife Motherhood: Cooperative Breeding and the 'Disestablishment ' of the Reproductive Clock.” In M. L. Fisher, J. Garcia, R. Chang (Editors); Sarah B Hrdy (Foreward) Evolution's Empress: How Females Shape Adaptation. Oxford University Press, New York, 2013.

“The evolving virgin: sexual treaties, gaga procreation and the facts of life,” May 5, 2013, Los Angeles Review of Books.

Reprinted: Arts & Opinion, August 1, 2013.

“Evolution, Sex, and Finding Your Inner Grok: An Interview with Marlene Zuk. Los Angeles Review of Books, Feb 26, 2013. (American Scientist).

Reprinted in LARB print Magazine: April 2013 (p.36f).

“Long War between the Sexes,” Times Literary Supplement, October 5, 2012. Co-Lead.  On theories of evolution, sexonomics and paternity leave. Arts & Letters Daily, 3QuarksDaily, The Browser. http://paulseabright.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/War-between-the-sexes-TLS.pdf

“The Girl with the Father Tattoo”—Rethinking father-daughter relations (on Title IX and 21^st century permutations), Los Angeles Review of Books, December, 2011. The Browser, India Times, etc.

“Artificial People”—on how advances in science rekindle old myths and fears. Times Literary Supplement  (TLS), May 12, 2011. Co-Lead  (On Philip Ball’s Unnatural: The Heretical Idea of Making Artificial People.). American Scientist: Scientists’ Bookshelf Monthly Vol. 9, no.5; The Browser, May 2011.

“Social Darwinism”—A critique of Robin Dunbar’s ‘How Many Friends Does one Person Need?  Dunbar’s Number and Other Evolutionary Quirks,’” Los Angeles Review of Books, May 24 , 2011. Arts and Letters Daily.

Review Article: “Untying the Knot: Disestablishing Marriage,” The European Legacy, Volume 17, no. 3. June 2012.    (PHIL PAPERS—2012).

“On Melvin Konner’s ‘The Evolution of Childhood,” The Times Literary Supplement, September 29, 2010.  Lead Article.  An analysis of the purported evolutionary levers for the unusual shape of human childhood.

"Choice for Mothers"--Decision theory and surrogacy, The Times Literary Supplement, June 3, 2010.

“Annie Leibovtiz’s Queer Consumption of Motherhood,” Women’s Studies Quarterly 37(2). Fall/Winter 2009/10.

“Mothers Without Others" (Review of primatologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy’s Mothers and Others), Times Literary Supplement. Lead article. May 22, 2009.

“La stratégie des bébés” In BOOKS: L’Actualité par les livres du Monde. Septembre 2009 (Toulouse). Numéro 8. (translation, altered somewhat, of above).

“Professional Women, Timing, and Reproductive Strategies in the 1990s,” Lead article in edited volume by Andrea O’Reilly entitled Feminist Mothering (SUNY Press, 2008).

“Genetic engineering, and the case against perfection,” The Times Literary Supplement, April 17, 2008.

“Bad Harvests” (on IVF and the closeted practice of selective reduction of embryos in utero). The Times Literary Supplement, February, 2008.

“Cradle or grave?” The Times Literary Supplement, May, 2007. Lead article.  Also reprinted in TLS Highlights. On the politics of birth practices historically; how one royal case of cephalo-pelvic disproportion launched the Victorian Age.

“Gender and Technology: A historical overview,” The European Legacy (Routledge Press), Volume 11, Number 7, Winter 2006/2007.

“Postmodern Families: Buying Mr. Darcy,” The Times Literary Supplement, January, 2007. Lead article. Reprinted in TLS Highlights (social sciences).

“Keep Mums,” The Times Literary Supplement, November, 2005 (whether parents’ gender matters in raising sons).

“Test Tube Suits”--Reproduction and Responsibility: reaching consensus, The Times Literary Supplement, December, 2004. (Addresses implications of policy report produced by President’s Council of Bioethics).

 “Brave New World”--The Contested Politics of Stem Cell Research, The Times Literary Supplement. March 11, 2004. (On stem cell research in historical context).

“Mary Baker Eddy and the New Age,” The Times Literary Supplement: co-lead article. (On mind cure movement pre-1900 and what I call the therapeutic discourses of the late 1990's.)

“Reeducation on Henry Adams: Ineffectual Aesthete or Influential Statesman?,” The Nation (June 4, 2001).             https://www.thenation.com/article/re-education-henry-adams/

“1939/40: Of Virginia Woolf, Fascism and Gramophones.” PMLA Vol. 113, no.3. Publication of Modern Language Association. (Winner of Schachterle prize, awarded by Society of Literature, Science and the Arts)

Edited Volumes and BOOK project

Book PROJECT: Signaling effects, unequal aging, and reproductive timing in historical and evolutionary context.

E-book: Editor and Contributor: Los Angeles Review of Books - Digital Editions: The New Age of Science and Technology (essays by Steven Shapin, Andrew Benedict-Nelson, Andrew Scull and Rob Horning (July, 2013))

E-book: Editor, Los Angeles Review of Books - Digital Editions: Science and Legibility: Reading and misreading bodies, races, and melting glaciers (July, 2014)

E-book: Editor, Los Angeles Review of Books – Digital Editions: The Digital Revolution (Winter 2016/17). Forthcoming.