Emily Ogden is the author of On Not Knowing: How to Love and Other Essays, Credulity: A Cultural History of US Mesmerism and Darkness Becomes Bright. Her writing has appeared in The Yale Review, Critical Inquiry, The New York Times, American Literature, the LA Review of Books Quarterly Journal, The Point, and Berfrois, among other publications. The recipient of a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant and a Mellon Fellowship in the Columbia Society of Fellows, she is Professor of English at the University of Virginia.