Sarah Mesle

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 postdoctoral fellowships in English at the University of Michigan and the University of California, Los Angeles. She is a 19th-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.

Articles

The Heirs and Their Hair: On HBO’s “House of the Dragon”
Sarah Mesle assesses the first season of HBO’s “Game of Thrones” spinoff, “House of the Dragon.”
Sarah MesleOct 24, 2022
- Dear Television
- Television
Flick and Feather: On Diana’s Hair
Sarah Mesle reckons with what Diana's hair, in Spencer and in real life, says about feminism, power, whiteness, and princesses
Sarah MesleNov 11, 2021
- Dear Television
- Film
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.
Sarah MesleMay 18, 2021
- Cultural Studies
Dickinson's Hair
For Dear Television, Sarah Mesle explores the follicular politics of gender, race, and poetics on Apple TV+'s revisionist fantasy Dickinson.
Sarah MesleJan 21, 2021
- Dear Television
Her Sentimental Properties
White women have trafficked in Black women’s milk.
Sarah MesleJun 22, 2020
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?
Jane Hu, Jorge Cotte, Phillip Maciak, Sarah MesleApr 7, 2020
- Dear Television
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.
Sarah MesleSep 13, 2019
- Dear Television
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.
Sarah MesleAug 30, 2019
- Dear Television

View all articles by Sarah Mesle