Portfolio: Writing

Below are some examples of my writing, an account of how I came to be the writer that I am, and a list of my scholarly publications.

Articles Written

Although perhaps not as much as I would like to, at Wonderful Machine I’ve been able to do some writing that requires thinking and composition (and lots of other more structured writing). Here are a few:

“SEO Audit & Implementation: Evi Abeler“

October 18, 2021

Case study of an SEO audit and implementation done for New York food photographer Evi Abeler.

“Expert Advice: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Photographers“
June 21, 2021

A refresh of an older site article providing guidance for photographers confronting SEO.

“Expert Advice: How to Write Alt Text”
March 17, 2020

Originally written for photographers during the spring 2020 COVID lockdown, the article explains why and how photographers should write the alt text for the images on their websites.

More structured writings

Each month Wonderful Machine publishes its “report card articles,” which are listings of its activities from the perspective of website analytics, web ads, social media, client outreach, and more.

Writing Background

I have learned a lot about writing from

  1. completing the requirements for two different Master’s degrees in English and Philosophy;
  2. writing a 300-page dissertation to complete my Ph.D.;
  3. teaching composition and rhetoric courses at Syracuse University;
  4. teaching philosophy and liberal arts courses at various universities, which requires directing and then grading student writing;
  5. reading widely both in the primary and secondary texts of literature and philosophy;
  6. and tutoring students for the verbal portions of the ACT and SAT examination.

Honestly, test prep tutoring has taught me the most about all of the rules of grammar. Before that, I would probably use the em-dash and commas interchangeably to set off modifying phrases. Before that, I hadn’t even seriously considered why the Oxford comma is the only civilized way to write.

Want to know about my professional editing work?

Scholarly Publications

To complete the requirements for the degree of the Doctor of Philosophy, of Philosophy, I wrote my dissertation on the effects of the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza on modern German philosophy (i.e. 1650–1850), up to and specifically on the German Idealist philosopher F.W.J. Schelling.

My AOS (area of specialization) was German Idealism, even thought I started philosophy by reading Jacques Derrida (who I had the privilege of meeting several times, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and the usual suspects. I literally cut my philosophical teeth on Heidegger’s Being and Time. It sounds nerdy (and is), but I’m really proud of that.

“Immanence and Freedom in Schelling’s Freiheitsschrift”, in Philosophie. Theologie. Littérature. Etudes offertes en hommage au quartre-vingt-dixième anniversaire de Xavier Tilliette, S.J., Antonio Russo and Miklos Vetö, eds. (Peeters, France: Éditions de L’Institut Supérieur de Philosophie, 2011), 319-336.

“Pantheism and Atheism in Schelling’s Freiheitsschrift”, in After the Postsecular and the Postmodern: New Essays in the Continental Philosophy of Religion, Anthony Paul Smith and Daniel Whistler, eds. (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge Scholar’s Press, 2010), 64-80.

“When Time Preceded Eternity: Schelling’s Conversion to History”, Pli: the Warwick Journal of Philosophy, 21(2010): 26-41.