Mary Zaborskis edits the Shoptalk and Quizzical series at Public Books. She is an assistant professor of American studies and gender studies at Penn State Harrisburg. The author of Queer Childhoods: Institutional Futures of Indigeneity, Race, and Disability (New York University Press), she serves on the steering committee of the LGBT Center of Central PA’s History Project.
Mary Zaborskis
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Writing on Public Books
Shoptalk: Overheard at ASA 2025 or MLA 2026?
This edition of Shoptalk asks: Can you guess which of the following was overheard at ASA 2025 and which was overheard at MLA 2026?
Shoptalk: Overheard at ASA 2023 or MLA 2024?
This edition of Shoptalk asks: Can you guess which of the following was overheard at ASA 2023 and which was overheard at MLA 2024?
Shoptalk: Overheard at ASA and ASTR 2022
In this special mega edition of Shoptalk, guess which performative utterance was said at which conference.
Quizzical: Which Academic Organization Are You?
If your life was a conference, what would be its theme?
Quizzical: Which Academic Press Are You?
We don’t judge books by their covers, but we do sort people based on which academic presses match their personality types.
Shoptalk: Overheard at the Virtual Conference
In this parodic installment of Shoptalk, we salute the year of conferences that have tried to be.
Quizzical: What Academic Jobs Wiki Updater Are You?
The academic job market reflects some of the most infuriating, mind-numbing …
Shoptalk: Overheard at MLA 2020
This year’s Modern Language Association Annual Convention took place January 9–12 in Seattle, Washington. Participants were far from sleepless as they traversed …
Quizzical: What Essential Part of an Academic Conference Are You?
Here at Public Books, we embrace the good, the bad, and the ugly of an …
Shoptalk: Overheard at ASA 2019
This year’s American Studies Association annual meeting took place November 7–10 in Honolulu, Hawai’i. ASA President, Scott Kurashige, transformed this year’s …
Shoptalk: Overheard at ASAP 2019
This year the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present (ASAP) convention was held at the University of Maryland, College Park. The hotel bar may have …
Quizzical: Which Psychoanalytic Literary Term Are You?
Some literary theorists fawn over Freud, others love Lacan, while others still …
QUIZZICAL: Can You Match the Lock of Hair with Its Author?
Both the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin and the …
QUIZZICAL: Which Academic Jargon Term Are You?
You may deploy academic jargon in your quotidian routines, but let’s take your praxis a step further. Which literary theoretical term do you embody?
QUIZZICAL: Famous Writers, and Their Pets!
Behind many celebrated writers is a canine, feline, reptilian, or avian pal. Do you know the domestic creatures that have kept these novelists, playwrights, poets …
Shoptalk: Overheard at ACLA 2019
This year’s annual meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association gathered at Georgetown University. Participants met in small …
Dancing Queer Children
Fans of Dance Moms and of RuPaul’s Drag Race alike rejoiced when Netflix debuted Dancing Queen this past fall. As Abby Lee Miller—the Dance Moms teacher and queen of my heart—frequently and …
Shoptalk: Overheard at MLA 2019
This year’s MLA convention in Chicago, Illinois, was a suspiciously pleasant affair: clear weather, somewhat navigable conference spaces, and proximity to …
Shoptalk: Overheard at ASA and NWSA 2018
This year Americanists, feminists, feminist Americanists, and everyone between and beyond gathered in downtown Atlanta for the annual meetings of both the …
Shoptalk: Overheard at C19
This year, members of the Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists gathered in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for the organization’s fifth biennial …
Shoptalk: Overheard at MLA 2018
Literary critics that managed the trek to this year’s Modern Language Association conference descended into a professional circle of hell: the convention was held in …
Shoptalk: Overheard at ASA
This year’s American Studies Association conference coincided with Chicago’s first snowfall of the season. Its theme was “Pedagogies of Dissent,” and conversations that circulated in the conference commons suggest there was robust critical engagement with emergent subthemes of Pedagogies of Day Drinking, Dissenting from Weather, and Against 8 a.m. Panels. Read on for a neoliberal […]
Shoptalk: Overheard At MLA
Literary scholars say the darndest things, and their comments at this year’s annual Modern Language Association convention in Philadelphia proved no exception to …
#Academoji
“When you just send me a text full of emojis, it is so easy to dismiss you … A panda next to a gun next to a wrapped gift? It makes no sense!” So Ray admonishes Shoshanna’s use of emojis in the season 2 premiere of Girls, clearly missing the power of the tiny icons […]
Shoptalk: Overheard at the Feminist Theory Workshop
On March 24–25, hundreds of feminist, queer, gender, and sexuality studies scholars and activists—representing 87 institutions and 18 countries—gathered at Duke University for its 11th Annual Feminist Theory Workshop. Its attendees proved that, despite the stereotypes, feminists can be funny, especially when they think no one is listening. 1. Person 1: “I wish it was […]
Shoptalk: Overheard At MLA
Literary scholars say the darndest things, and their comments at this year’s annual Modern Language Association convention in Philadelphia proved no exception to this rule. From chatter overheard in bathrooms and on barstools …
The Cult of Girlhood
Is girlhood a cult? Emma Cline’s new novel draws on the history of the Manson Family to explore how girlhood and cults both depend on rituals and intimacies. The Girls seems to tell the story of how one man—Russell, the Manson figure around whom the cult centers—can drive girls of “a different species” to commit […]
Virtual Roundtable on Women Directors
It’s no secret that Hollywood has a diversity problem, especially when it comes to hiring directors …
Primal Scenes
This past year, Yoplait began airing a commercial, entitled “Mmm,” which features a family—a man, woman, and two children—eating yogurt, producing a chorus of “Mmms” as they ingest. The mother emits a particularly deep “Mmm,” to which the father responds with a louder “Mmm.” With the yogurt and spoon in hand, he starts rapidly banging […]
Murderous Schoolgirls
While little girls may be made of sugar and spice and everything nice, in fiction the teenagers they grow into are anything but. We are drawn to stories where girls are scandalous, promiscuous, and even—or especially—murderous, where a sinister drive emerges from beneath facades of propriety and innocence. The dark underbelly of female adolescence and […]
Queer Magic
Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane and Michelle Tea’s Mermaid in Chelsea Creek both use magic to imagine solutions to childhood anxieties: What do you do when your family doesn’t feel like one? What kind of alternate kinship is available to a kid disempowered by age, obedience, and dependence? How might […]
