Maggie Jackson is an award-winning author, social critic, and independent scholar whose writings often explore technology’s impact on humanity. Her latest book, Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure (Prometheus, 2023), investigates uncertainty’s unexpectedly positive role in the life of the mind. Once overlooked as a topic of study and long maligned, uncertainty is now revealed to be an essential gadfly of the mind, jolting us from the routine and the assumed, as well as a space for exploring new, unseen meaning. A former Boston Globe contributing columnist, Jackson’s books include Distracted (Prometheus, 2008, 2018), winner of the 2020 Dorothy Lee Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Culture. She has contributed to numerous anthologies including Living with Robots: Emerging Issues on the Psychological and Social Impacts of Robotics (Elsevier, 2019), The State of the American Mind: Sixteen Leading Critics on the New Anti-Intellectualism (Templeton Press, 2015), and The Digital Divide: Arguments for and Against Facebook, Google, Texting, and the Age of Social Networking (Tarcher/Penguin, 2011). Her essays and articles have appeared in media worldwide, including the New York Times, NPR, Utne Reader, and Gastronomica. She has received numerous media awards and was the 2014 Scholar-in-Residence at the Center for Art in Wood (Philadelphia). She holds a BA from Yale and a graduate degree in International Politics (with Distinction) from the London School of Economics.
Bard Graduate Center is an advanced graduate research institute in New York City dedicated to the cultural histories of the material world. Our MA and PhD degree programs, Gallery exhibitions, research initiatives, scholarly publications and public programs explore new ways of thinking about decorative arts, design history, and material culture.
The Architectural Image and Early Modern Science
Wendel Dietterlin and the Rise of Empirical Investigation
A lecture by Elizabeth J. Petcu (University of Edinburgh)
March 19, 2025
Performance, Craft, and the Body
A presentation by Lauren Kalman (Wayne State University)
March 26, 2025
CANCELED—Enchanting Surfaces
Objects, Gender, and Ink Painting
A conversation with Peng Wei
April 2, 2025