New Books Network Melissa Adler, "Peculiar Satisfaction: Thomas Jefferson and the Mastery of Subjects" (Fordham UP, 2025)
Jan 27, 2026
Melissa Adler, Associate Professor at Western University and author of Peculiar Satisfaction, studies libraries, archives, and classification. She traces how Jefferson’s library and archival practices shaped classification, racialized knowledge, and museum objectification. The conversation highlights preservation as power, the persistence of exclusion in information systems, and the stakes for democracy and public institutions.
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Formative Library Origins
- Melissa Adler grew up visiting libraries and was shaped by her grandmother, a librarian, and frequent public library trips.
- She earned an MLIS online while living in a cabin and began noticing classification problems on the job that launched her research.
Discovery Through Catalog Work
- Adler discovered problematic subject headings while managing authority records at a small college library and logged examples.
- That investigation into headings like "paraphilias" became the seed for her first book, Cruising the Library.
Documents As Monuments
- Adler frames documents and information institutions as monuments that embody and perpetuate power relations.
- She argues that classification systems endure like monuments, making correction difficult and politically fraught.
