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Welcome to my new website, still under construction. Over the course of my career, I have published hundreds of reviews and essays, as well as three books. I have also taught undergraduates at seven universities, including Boston College, where since 2003 it has been my pleasure to lead interdisciplinary honors seminars in the foundational works of the Western tradition.

My interests are too broad and diverse to fit into any known pigeonhole, but that does not mean they are scattered. When my first book came out, New York Times critic Christopher Lehman-Haupt was kind enough to write this: “Such a mind as Ms. Bayles’s keeps you guessing where it will dart to next. If it darts absolutely everywhere in Hole in Our Soul, it weaves a cultural landscape that finally makes coherent and enlightening sense.”

The mind-darting has continued ever since, and so, I hope, has the sense-making. The purpose of this website is to collect as much of my writing as possible into one easy-to-navigate space and invite the visitor to decide.