Batya Ungar-Sargon

Freelance

Batya Ungar-Sargon has a PhD in the 18th-century novel. Her dissertation is entitled ‘Coercive Pleasures: The Force and Form of the Novel 1719-1740’. She is also a freelance writer living in Brooklyn, New York.

Written by Batya Ungar-Sargon

Women in formal attire standing in the background, one woman smiling in the foreground, and a man facing them.

essaySelf-improvement

The pleasure of their pain

Why the punishment and humiliation of reality TV contestants provides such a satisfying and deep pleasure

Batya Ungar-Sargon

A romantic painting of a disheveled man and woman embracing on a grassy hill, with a white horse running in the background.

essayGender

She swoons to conquer

Readers of romance fiction enjoy tales of alpha males and forced seduction. Could they still be considered feminists?

Batya Ungar-Sargon

A group of men in Hasidic Jewish attire with hats and sidelocks, standing close together at night, looking in different directions.

essayPhilosophy of religion

Undercover atheists

Seduced by science and rationalism, yet tied to their families and communities, Hasidic atheists opt for a double life

Batya Ungar-Sargon