Thomas de Zengotita is a contributing editor at
Harper's magazine. His work has been acclaimed for turning irony—the postmodern posture of apathy and disengagement—into a powerful call for us to engage more deeply with the human dilemmas of our globalizing yet fragmented world. He teaches at The Dalton School and at the Draper Graduate Program at New York University. He holds a B.A., M.A, and Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia University.
His essays include “The Romance of Empire” in Harper's, July 2003; “Common Ground” in Harper's, December 2002; a profile of Hell's Angel Sonny Barger in Shout, April 2002; “The Numbing of the American Mind” in Harper's, April 2002; “World World; or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blob” in Harper's, July 2000; “Geometry” in John Brockman (ed.), The Greatest Inventions of the Past 2,000 Years, (Simon and Schuster, 2000); “The Gunfire Dialogues” in Harper's, July 1999; “Irony, Celebrity and You” in The Nation, December 2, 2020; and “On Wittgenstein's 'Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough'” in Cultural Anthropology (April 1993).
Zengotita's most recent book is Mediated: The Hidden Effects of Media on People, Places, and Things (Bloomsbury, 2005). His fiction includes “Hannah's Birthday,” which is forthcoming in Fiction, and “The Other Side,” which appeared in Logos, Summer 2003.
selected books
Mediated: The Hidden Effects of Media on People, Places, and Things
(Bloomsbury, 2005)
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selected articles
“The Romance of Empire and the Politics of Self-love”
Harper's, July 2003
“Common Ground: Finding Our Way Back to the Enlightenment”Harper's, January 2003
“The Numbing of the American Mind: Culture as Anesthetic”Harper's, April 2002
“World World: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blob”Harper's, July 2000
“The Gunfire Dialogues: How Media Influences Children Prone to Violence”Harper's, July 1999
“On Wittgenstein's Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough”Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 4, No. 1, 1989
