What Some of Our Most Read Essays of 2015 Say About You

WHAT WAS 2015’s ZEITGEIST? Perhaps it’s to be found in this roundup of essays, reviews, and interviews that you, dear reader, picked up, shared, argued with, and even loved: Feminism. Heidegger. Race in America (and across the globe). The end of Mad Men. Why your rent is so high and your pay is so low. Protest in our time.

The following is a curated list of some of the most read articles in 2015, sorted into categories that speak to the social and cultural currents of the year. We look forward to continuing the conversation with you in 2016.

FEMINISM:

On Spinsters
by Briallen Hopper

Gender, blah, blah, blah
by Katherine Angel

Genderalizations
by Toby Lichtig

A Girl’s Guide to Sexual Purity
by Carmen Maria Machado

Reading as Kissing, Sex with Ideas: "Lesbian" Barebacking?
by Kathryn Bond Stockton

Taylor & Karlie & Lena: The Romance of Celebrity Female Friendship in the Feminist Selfie Generation
by Rachel Vorona Cote

FILM AND TV:

Game of Thrones, Season 5: "Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken" 
Fantasizing Consent
by Sarah Mesle

Brown Broads, White TV
by Rebecca Wanzo & Kyla Wazana Tompkins

Room Is the Crash of Feminism
by Sarah Blackwood

Mad Men Fantasies
by Lili Loofbourow & Phillip Maciak

She’s the Boss
by W. Kamau Bell

Mr. Robot: Season 1
by Phillip Maciak

ON WRITING AND WRITERS

Writing in Cafés: A Personal History
by Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft

Selling Out the Newspaper Comic Strip
by Luke Epplin

The Program Era and the Mainly White Room
by Juliana Spahr & Stephanie Young

Writing While Muslim: The Freedom to Be Offended
by Rafia Zakaria

A Patron Saint for Sadsacks: What Snark Says About Failure — and What Literature Says Back
Jamie Fisher on The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure

I Am a Fucking Plagiarist
by Javier Grillo-Marxuach

Susan Sontag: Critic and Crusader
by Steve Wasserman

PHILOSOPHY

Vision Science
Josh Armstrong on Seeing Things as They Are: A Theory of Perception

Fail Slow, Fail Hard
Martin Woessner on Freedom to Fail: Heidegger’s Anarchy

Are You Out of Your Mind?
Charles Clavey on The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction

Three Contemporary Spinozas
Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft on Spinoza and the Politics of Renaturalization and Spinoza Contra Phenomenology: French Rationalism from Cavailles to Deleuze and Spinoza for Our Time: Politics and Postmodernity

Searching for Foucault in an Age of Inequality
Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins and Alexander Arnold on Critiquer Foucault: Les Années 1980 et la tentation néolibérale

Self, with or without Selfies
Stan Persky on Self: Philosophy in Transit

INTERVIEWS

The Blue-Collar King: An Interview with Stephen King
Angela S. Allan interviews Stephen King

Writing Against Complacency
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore interviews Jessa Crispin

A Love Letter to Los Angeles
Nicole Antonio interviews Wendy C. Ortiz

The Challenge of Protest in Our Time: Micah White on Social Change Movements, Theories of Revolution, and Moving on from Occupy Wall Street
Justin Campbell interviews Micah White

An Ongoing Autobiography of a Slightly Younger SelfLaurie Winer interviews Lena Dunham

A Religion of the Text
Ben Bush interviews Joshua Cohen

PODCASTS

Radio Hour: Debating Vanessa Place's Gone with the Wind Controversy

Radio Hour: Sam Harris on Islam and the Future of Tolerance

Colin Marshall interviews Amelia Gray

Colin Marshall interviews Jay Rubin

Radio Hour: Karina Longworth, Dana Johnson, and Farewell to Colin Marshall

Radio Hour: Naked at Lunch, Female Comedy Writers, and Vicious Disequilibrium

OTHER
or things you loved, that we love, that didn’t fit neatly into a category

Why Your Rent Is So High and Your Pay Is So Low
by Tom Streithorst

50 Shades of Libertarian Love
by Walter Benn Michaels

Queer Blood
by Ned Stuckey-French

How Does Twitter Use You?
by Matt Pearce & Julia Carrie Wong

On the New Literary Tourism
by Geoff Bendeck

Culture War: What Is It Good For?
Jacqui Shine on A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars