Me on Me

Nobody ever asked me: “Jacques, you who write so much, you who indiscriminately spew torrents of words and ‘ideas’ and aphorisms on all and sundry–what are some of your favorite pieces written by you?” 

 

Nobody ever asked me that. In response, though, I’d list the following:

 

1. I wrote this piece for LitHub about James Baldwin with my colleague, Professor Terrence Johnson, now at Harvard Divinity School. It was a team effort and our voices kind of blended. 

2. This piece for The Chronicle of Higher Education placed me in the dwindling ranks of tenured professors who really like teaching undergraduates. It put me on the map and got me invited to North Dakota State University’s Office of Teaching and Learning in Fargo (or was it Bismarck?). No matter, those scholars were amazing. Too, they set up a visit for me at their Lawrence Welk museum. Class. 

3. These two essays about secular studies in higher education were instrumental in: 1) severing relationships with many colleagues, 2) infuriating people in Religious Studies, and, 3) learning more precisely how online cyber-bullying worked. There was unrest, so I wrote this.

4.  This piece for MSNBC about the Hulu series “The Bear” dropped about five seconds before season three of “The Bear” dropped, as it were.

5. These two pieces were written for the Brooklyn publisher Melville House. One was about campus move-in day, the other about Lena Dunham’s intertexting with Philip Roth. Problem is, they’ve disappeared from the publisher’s website. So there’s no link, just a nice memory. 

6. Never did I feel more like an investigative journalist or cast member of Scooby Doo than when researching this piece about the Mystery MAGA Rabbi. With a little assistance from an editor at Salon, we figured it out!

7. Only the Philip Roth Society would publish this article about Philip Roth’s complex reception among women readers. The former undergraduate who wrote part of it stole the show. 

8. This piece for the Washington Post about free speech–I’ve actually changed my mind about some of it. 

9. Mike White’s HBO series “White Lotus” (Season 2) argued that each and every one of us is gay! And I was there to reflect upon it.