Carrie Tirado Bramen is Professor of English at the University at Buffalo and Director of the University’s Gender Institute. She is the author of two books, American Niceness: A Cultural History (Harvard 2017), and The Uses of Variety: Modern Americanism and the Quest for National Distinctiveness (Harvard 2000). The latter was co-winner of the Thomas J. Wilson prize for best first book published by Harvard University Press. She has written for the Washington Post, The Conversation, Black Agenda Report, Political Theology Network, and Times Higher Education. Her essay, “Niceness in a Neoliberal Age,” appeared in Public Culture (May 2018).