Mark Dery is a cultural critic, essayist, and the author of four books: Escape Velocity, a critique of the “libertarian bro” ideology that dominated the Digital Revolution of the ‘90s; two studies of American mythologies (and pathologies), The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink and the essay collection I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts, andthe biography Born To Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey. He has taught journalism at NYU and “dark aesthetics” at the Yale School of Art, been a Chancellor’s Distinguished Fellow at UC Irvine and a Visiting Scholar at the American Academy in Rome. He popularized the concept of “culture jamming” and, in his 1993 essay, “Black to the Future,” coined the term “Afrofuturism.”
His editing interests on Wikipedia include art, architecture, design, visual culture, graphic novels, Edward Gorey, American Culture, philosophy, critical theory, literary theory, The Digital Age, media criticism/media theory, body studies, science fiction, Aesthetics, gender/masculinity/men’s studies, California studies, culture jamming/guerrilla media art, and, not least, Afrofuturism.