Natalia Mehlman Petrzela

Fellow, 2016-2017 and past

Natalia Mehlman Petrzela’s first book, Classroom Wars: Language, Sex, and the Making of Modern Political Culture (Oxford, 2015), explores the roots of the culture wars in American public schools. Her current book project, FIT NATION: How America Embraced Exercise as the Government Abandoned It, explains how physical fitness became a national obsession – and a consumer product, and is under contract with University of Chicago Press. Her writing has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, Slate, The Washington Post, and the Atlantic. She is a co-host of the Past Present podcast.