Sarah Mesle (PhD, Northwestern) is faculty at USC and Senior Humanities Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books. Prior to arriving at USC, she held post-doctoral fellowships in English at the University of Michigan and the University of California, Los Angeles. She is a nineteenth-century Americanist by training and is interested, generally speaking, in the long history of the American popular novel and in the many ways pop culture can excite, estrange, and surprise. With Sarah Blackwood, she is co-editor of Avidly.org. You can follow her on Twitter.
CONTRIBUTOR ARTICLES
Academic Affects: A Conversation on Guilty Pleasures
Sarah Mesle talks with Arielle Zibrak, Ana Quiring, and Kyla Wazana Tompkins about the “bad” feelings of aesthetic experience....
Dickinson's Hair
For Dear Television, Sarah Mesle explores the follicular politics of gender, race, and poetics on Apple TV+'s revisionist fantasy Dickinson....
Her Sentimental Properties
White women have trafficked in Black women’s milk....
Dear Television vs The Psychometric Personality Quiz
We took that Psychometric Statistical "Which Character" Personality Quiz, and we're not happy. And, come to think of it, who are *we* at all?...
Good Crumb: On The Great British Bake Off
For Dear Television, Sarah Mesle talks rough puffs, proving drawers, self-saucing puddings, and The Great British Bake Off in the age of Brexit....
A Television of Her Own: On Emily Nussbaum
Dear Television's Sarah Mesle considers Emily Nussbaum as a feminist critic and a chronicler of the televisual cult of seriousness....
Game of Thrones: Season 8, "The Iron Throne"
For Dear Television, Aaron Bady and Sarah Mesle consider the new occupant of the Iron Throne and what got them there and ask, "But why, though?"...
Game of Thrones: Season 8, "The Bells"
For Dear Television, Aaron Bady, Sarah Mesle, and Phil Maciak consider the relative madness of the queen(s) on Game of Thrones....
Game of Thrones: Season 8, "The Last of the Starks"
For Dear Television, Aaron Bady and Sarah Mesle check in with the last of the Starks on the day after the long night in Westeros....
Game of Thrones: Season 8, "The Long Night"
Dear Television's Aaron Bady, Sarah Mesle, and Phil Maciak reluctantly celebrate all the characters who survived "The Long Night," they guess....
Game of Thrones: Season 8, "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms"
Dear Television's Aaron Bady and Sarah Mesle talk about all the listening and learning going on in "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms."...
Game of Thrones: Season 8, "Winterfell"
Dear Television's Aaron Bady and Sarah Mesle dramatically reunite to discuss "Winterfell" and why it's a dumb idea for Game of Thrones to ever really end....
American Studies Takes Care: An Interview with ASA President Roderick Ferguson
Sarah Mesle interviews ASA President Roderick Ferguson about this year's upcoming ASA conference, "States of Emergence."...
Meg Murry’s Glasses
Sarah Mesle on how Madeleine L’Engle’s and Ava DuVernay’s "A Wrinkle in Time" diverge around their contrasting ethics of the visual....
“‘America’ Is Not the Object”: An Interview with Kandice Chuh, President of the American Studies Association
What does the American Studies Association make possible in 2017?...
On This Day: The Cubs and the Feeling That Stays With You
Sarah Mesle watches the Cubs lose the 2017 National League Championship Series. ...
Star Trek: Discovery
Aaron Bady and Sarah Mesle for Dear TV ravenously consume two new hours of Star Trek: Discovery. What's the verdict? The present sucks....
Game of Thrones: Season 7, "The Dragon and the Wolf"
Every city in the world is built on wildfire — Dear Television on the end of Game of Thrones, season seven....
Game of Thrones: Season 7, “Beyond the Wall”
JON SNOW: I would like to be excluded from this narrative. GAME OF THRONES: NOPE....
Game of Thrones: Season 7, "Eastwatch"
That bowl of fermented crab seems sort of unsteady; how do you keep it from spilling if you’re taking that little rowboat on the ocean? Invest in some good Tupperware, would be my advice....
Game of Thrones: Season 7, "The Spoils of War"
Dear Television ponders which chosen one is the most chosen, and whether there's something else dragons can do....
Game of Thrones, "The Queen's Justice"
Sarah Mesle on Cersei, Dany, Sansa, and Tracy Flick...
Game of Thrones: Season 7, "The Queen's Justice"
Dear Television discusses what happens when the Game of Thrones is only played by veterans and no rookies....
Game of Thrones: Season 7, "Stormborn"
Tarly Tarly Bo-Barly Banana-Fana Fo-Farly Fee-Fy-Mo-Marly TARLY!...
Game of Thrones: Season 7, "Dragonstone"
Soup, Poop, and Climate Change...
The Handmaid's Tale Finale
Dear Television braids hair and cuts to the feeling in the season finale of The Handmaid's Tale......
The Handmaid's Tale, "A Woman's Place"
DearTV discusses the 6th episode of Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale......
The Handmaid's Tale on Hulu
Dear TV begins its weekly coverage of Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale......
At Home With American Studies: An Interview with ASA President Robert Warrior
American Studies at its best is a critique of America in the world....
The 2016 World Series
Dear TV wonders if the Cubs can pull it out in the worst year ever....
Sunday Night Football
FOOTBALL: OKAY? Sarah: Phil! Here we are in the Los Angeles Review of Books, writing about football. We ...
Game of Thrones: Season 6, "The Winds of Winter"
Winter is here!...
Game of Thrones: Season 6, "Battle of the Bastards"
Evil Father’s Day: or, We’re Not Going to Do That, at Least Maybe Not...
Game of Thrones, Season 6: "No One"
Let's not go to Riverrun, it's a silly place....
Game of Thrones: Season 6, "The Broken Man"
You Know I’ll Never Hurt You, Right: Or, Chopping Wood in Westeros...
Game of Thrones: Season 6, "Blood of My Blood"
Imma Let You Finish But Don’t Drink That, She’s Trying to Kill You...
Game of Thrones: Season 6, "The Door"
“We can go home now, Hodor”...
Game of Thrones: Season 6, "Book of the Stranger"
"I'm With Her"...
Game of Thrones: Season 6, "Home"
Jon Can’t Go On, He’ll Go On...
Game of Thrones: Season 6, "The Red Woman"
Here’s a thought experiment for you. What if the person gazing at the naked Melisandre — gazing at all the women in this episode — was Prince?...
Radio Hour: Rainn Wilson, Mei Fong, and “Game of Thrones”
Subscribe on iTunes - Listen Live on KPFK This week’s show features more interviews from the Los Angeles Times Festival of ...
Underground: Season 1, "War Chest"
Preparing for War...
Underground: Season 1, "The Macon 7"
Dear Television on WGN's Underground...
The Oscars 2016
Dear Television discusses the 2016 Oscars...
"Broad City," Season 3
Broad City’s Third Coming...
Adapting Magic: An Interview with TV Writer Henry Alonso Myers
In conversation with a TV writer for SyFy's adaptation of Lev Grossman's The Magicians...
Super Yoncé
Dear Television on Super Bowl 50 and Beyonce...
Are We Not Kardashians?: On "The People v. OJ Simpson"
Dear Television reviews "American Crime Story: The People v. OJ Simpson"...
Our Lady of Sorrows: On "The X-Files"
Dear Television chats about The X-Files season 10 miniseries...
Miserablism and Resistance at the American Studies Association
Sarah Mesle interviews David Roediger about the 2015 American Studies Association conference and ASA's relationship to social action....
Radio Hour: “That Thing You Do With Your Mouth,“ Parnaz Foroutan, and “The Royal We“
On this week’s show, author David Shields talks about his new collaboration That Thing You Do With Your Mouth, LARB ...
Radio Hour: Mansplaining, Nature Noir, and Obscure Hollywood Novels
Nina Revoyr talks about her new backpacking thriller "Lost Canyon," and LARB senior editor Sarah Mesle explains "mansplaining."...
Reading Fashion
"Is fashion something that, you think, needs to be read?"...
True Detective, Season 2: "Maybe Tomorrow"
Mad Pitz: Fury Road...
True Detective, Season 2: "Night Finds You"
Midnight Dreary...
Interview with Mallory Ortberg of “The Toast”
Mallory Ortberg, co-founder of "The Toast," explains why she is the Tom Bombadil of feminism in this interview from the 2015 LA Times Festival of Books....
True Detective, Season 2: "The Western Book of the Dead"
Happy Father's Day...
Game of Thrones: Season 5, "Mother's Mercy"
What Happened and What Should Have Happened...
Game of Thrones: Season 5, "Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken"
Fantasizing Consent...
Game of Thrones: Season 5, "Kill the Boy"
50 Shades of Greyscale...
Game of Thrones: Season 5, "Sons of the Harpy"
When Bad Things Happen to Good People...
Game of Thrones: Season 5, "High Sparrow"
Cersei Lannister’s Last F–ckable Day...
Game of Thrones: Season 5, "The House of Black and White"
50 Shades of Black and White...
Game of Thrones: Season 5, "The Wars to Come"
Eyes Wide Shut...
The 2014 Dear TV Questionnaire
Parts I and II...
Srsly.
"Texts from Jane Eyre" Ortberg’s satire matters because it is fantastically able to express women’s anger toward men: men both real, and imagined....
Stephin Merritt's 101 Two-Letter Words
The Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt and cartoonist Roz Chast deliver a new collection of hilarious poems & comics that will also boost your Scrabble skills....
Fun, Fury, and the American Studies Association
An Interview with ASA President Lisa Duggan...
Outlander: Season 1
'Outlander' votes for Scotland...
The Knick, Season 1: "Method and Madness" and "Mr. Paris Shoes"
Watching 'The Knick' — and Ferguson...
Game of Thrones: Season 4, "The Children"
Arya's American Fantasy...
Game of Thrones: Season 4, "The Watchers on the Wall"
Mammoth Genre...
Game of Thrones: Season 4, "The Mountain and the Viper"
The Trans Oberyn Tipping Point...
Game of Thrones: Season 4, "Mockingbird"
Westeros Self-fashioning...
Game of Thrones: Season 4, "The Laws of Gods and Men"
Ten Things I Hate About My Favorite Show...
Game of Thrones: Season 4, "First of His Name"
Hurt Girls...
Game of Thrones: Season 4, "Oathkeeper"
Game of Thrones, Cliven Bundy, & the Fantasy of Freedom...
Game of Thrones, Season 4: "Breaker of Chains"
'Do I Have a Champion?'...
Game of Thrones: Season 4, "The Lion and the Rose"
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Dead Joffrey...
Game of Thrones: Season 4, "Two Swords"
This Week on Dear Television: "Reading Needles," from Sarah Mesle "The Most Fun Show to Talk About on Television," from AHP "...
Ten Things I Learned From Loving "Anne of Green Gables"
Triptych image: Catelynn Booth, "In Sun and Shadow III," 2013 Watercolor and gouache on paper 1: How to Read “Have ...
Kisses, Kings, Camaros: Maggie Stiefvater’s Rural Epic
ldquo;IT WAS STARTING, IT WAS STARTING,” the narrator tells us, midway through Maggie Stiefvater’s crescendo of a ...
YA Fiction and the End of Boys
WHEN I WAS PREGNANT the first time, I hoped I would have a girl. I know, obviously, that it’s ...
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