Publications
Books:
The Listeners: A History of Wiretapping in the United States (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2022). 368pp.
Savage Preservation: The Ethnographic Origins of Modern Media Technology (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2014). 312 pp.
Journal Articles:
“Wiretapping Stuff: Notes on Sound, Sense, and Technological Infrastructure.” Resilience 5.3 (Fall 2018), 96-108.
“Eavesdropping in the Age of The Eavesdroppers, or, The Bug in the Martini Olive.” Post45: Peer Reviewed (February 2016).
“Hearing Lost, Hearing Found: George Washington Cable and the Phono-Ethnographic Ear.” American Literature 82.3 (September 2010), 519-551.
“Ellison’s Hemingways.” African American Review 42.3-4 (Fall/Winter 2008), 513-532.
Book Chapters:
“Language in Motion: The Sign Talk Films of Hugh Lenox Scott and Richard Sanderville.” The Multilingual Screen: New Perspectives on Cinema and Linguistic Difference, eds. Tijana Mamula and Lisa Patti (New York and London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 183-205.
“Joe Henderson.” The African American National Biography, eds. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
“Nathaniel Mackey.” The African American National Biography, eds. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
Review Essays:
Uncertain Chances: Science, Skepticism, and Belief in Nineteenth-Century American Literature, by Maurice S. Lee. Notes and Queries 59.4 (December 2012), 616-617.
Signal and Noise: Media, Infrastructure, and Urban Culture in Nigeria, by Brian Larkin. Callaloo 33.1 (Winter 2010), 356-358.
Selected Public Writings:
”The Real Classified Documents Scandal Is Larger Than Any Ex-President.” Washington Post (February 2023).
”How The War on Drugs Convinced America to Wiretap the Digital Revolution.” Humanities Magazine (Winter 2023).
“When New York City Was a Wiretapper’s Dream.” IEEE Spectrum Magazine (March 2022).
”The Wiretappers Who Invented a High-Tech Crime.” Wall Street Journal (March 2022).
”The Birth of Spy Tech: From the Detectifone to the Bugged Martini.” Wired (March 2022).