Essays
Did Montana Violate Its Residents’ Right to a Clean Environment?, Washington Post (June 12, 2023)
Essay placing the nation's first climate trial into its historical context.
The Lost Promise of Environmental Rights, New York Review of Books (March 15, 2023)
Essay about the largely overlooked working-class movement for rights to clean air and water.
An AIDS Activist’s Archive, New York Review of Books (October 29, 2021)
Essay about AIDS, activism, memory, and the complex ethics of writing the history of a plague that disproportionately burdens the marginalized and disempowered.
The Radicalization of Clarence Thomas, The New Republic (August 17, 2021)
Essay drawing on original archival research to explore Clarence Thomas’s years of anti-environmental activity, first at Monsanto and then at the U.S. Senate.
Remembering Margo St. James, a Pioneering Sex Worker Organizer, Jacobin (January 22, 2021)
Essay memorializing and contextualizing trailblazing sex worker organizer Margo St. James.
Just Pack the Damn Courts, Jacobin (November 2, 2020)
Essay arguing that court-packing is the most effective means of achieving leftist legal goals, contrary to the arguments of many prominent legal scholars.
Climate Accountability and the Moral Logic of Stigma, LPEBlog (October 26, 2020) (with Camila Bustos)
Essay on the blog of the Law and Political Economy Project, arguing for the moral necessity of holding corporate law firms accountable when they protect the fossil fuel industry.
Sex Workers Are an Important Part of the Stonewall Story, But Their Role Has Been Forgotten, Time Magazine (June 27, 2019)
Essay arguing that sex workers were among the most important leaders at the Stonewall uprising, but that their contributions have been erased from popular memory over the last fifty years.
Remembering Stonewall as It Actually Was—and a Movement as It Really Is, The New Republic (June 24, 2019) (with Charles O’Malley)
Essay attempting to elucidate the radical and revolutionary ambition of the queer rights movement that emerged following Stonewall, and assessing modern attempts to remember this ambition.
Sex Workers of the World United, The American Scholar (June 3, 2019)
Magazine feature exploring the misunderstood history and genealogy of SESTA and FOSTA, two laws reshaping the way American authorities police sex workers.
America’s Forgotten Mass Imprisonment of Women Believed to Be Sexually Immoral, History.com (March 27, 2019)
Essay discussing one of the largest and longest-lasting mass carceral programs in American history.
“We Must Live Somehow. We Are Human,” Lapham’s Quarterly (September 20, 2018)
Photo essay documenting sex workers’ resistance throughout American history.
Indiana Authorities Said Their Abortion Law Was Designed to Protect Women, History News Network (August 5, 2018)
Op-ed column discussing a recent Indiana law, revealing that it is part of a continuum of paternalistic legislation ostensibly designed to protect marginalized women, but which actually perpetuates that marginalization.
The Legacy of Thomas Parran is More Troubling Than You Thought, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (July 8, 2018)
Op-ed column in daily newspaper, addressing a largely unknown legacy of one of the United States’ most controversial Surgeons General.
How Capitalism Helped to Fuel the Mass Incarceration of Women, Teen Vogue (June 25, 2018)
Adapted excerpt of my book, tying the mass incarceration of women throughout the twentieth century to the desire of businessmen and local officials to make money.
The U.S. Detained “Promiscuous” Women in What One Called a “Concentration Camp.” That Word Choice Matters, Time Magazine (May 15, 2018)
Essay exploring the incarceration of “promiscuous” women and the importance of discussing that carceral program using the incarcerated women’s own words.
Why Hero Worship is a Mistake for the Left, Washington Post (May 15, 2018)
Op-ed column exploring the problems inherent in the lionization of the rich and powerful, no matter how progressive they seem to be.