I am a generalist working in the humanities (and a little in the social sciences). I seek to understand what values we should live by in our connected, chaotic, and potentially catastrophic times. I teach writing at Princeton University and am the author of three  books, most recently The Good-Enough Life (Princeton University Press, 2022). Before that I wrote Global Origins of the Modern Self, from Montaigne to Suzuki (SUNY Press, 2019) and A Partial Enlightenment: What Modern Literature and Buddhism Can Teach Us About Living Well without Perfection (Columbia University Press, 2021). My writing has also appeared in Aeon, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Truthout, and elsewhere. My work has been discussed in the Atlantic, the Guardian, the Irish Times, the LA Review of Books, Vogue Japan, and elsewhere. 

With Rit Premnath, I co-edited and co-managed the programming for Shifter Magazine from 2014-2021. In 2018, with Meleko Mokgosi and Anthea Behm, I cofounded the Interdisciplinary Art and Theory Program at Jack Shainman Gallery. I now serve as an advisor to the Program. And with Danny Snelson and Mashinka Firunts, I am a member of the academic-artist collective, Research Service (currently inactive). I publish as Avram, but everyone calls me Avi. I can be reached by email aalpert (at) princeton (dot) edu