About The Author: Micki McGee

Micki McGee is a sociologist and cultural critic whose fascination with the American culture of self-improvement led her to spend five years reading and analyzing bestselling self-improvement books, visiting self-help groups and workshops, and talking with self-help readers.

When McGee observed that the number of self-help books in print began to increase in 1972—and nearly doubled relative to all books in print over the next three decades—she had a hunch that there was a relationship between the increase in self-help reading and the declining economic circumstances and opportunities for working Americans. Self-Help, Inc: Makeover Culture in American Life (Oxford University Press, 2005) takes up this idea and shows how the rise of makeover culture has left Americans not just overworked, but belabored—constantly at work on themselves, anxious to remain employed and employable.

Dr. McGee is currently on a new project that explores the impact of Yaddo, the renowned artists’ and writers’ retreat, on twentieth-century American culture. This research will result in a major exhibition scheduled for October 2008 at the New York Public Library's Gottesman Hall.  In addition, she serves as a Visiting Scholar at New York University and has recently joined the sociology faculty at Fordham University, where she is pursuing research on autism and its cultures.

The recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, including awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts and residencies at the McDowell Colony and Blue Mountain Center, and a Helena Rubinstein Fellowship to the Whitney Museum's Independent Study Program, McGee earned a doctoral degree in sociology from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and an Masters of Fine Arts in visual arts and theory from the University of California at San Diego. 

Her essays and articles have been published in The Nation, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Afterimage, Art & Text, High Performance and Social Text, as well as by the Centre Georges Pompidou and the New Museum of Contemporary Art.