Senior Professor in Arts and Communication at Malmö University, Sweden, I am a native New Yorker educated at the University of Chicago and the University of California, Berkeley. I am the author of a number of books and articles on literature and culture, especially regarding the early modern period, and a work of creative non-fiction, Working the Aisles: A Life in Consumption (Zero Books). Following up on Terrorism Before the Letter (U of Chicago Press) and The Aesthetics of Violence (Rowman and Littlefield) I am now, supported by the Swedish Research Council, writing a book called the Renaissance Discovery of Violence, From Boccaccio to Shakespeare.