# Jesse McCarthy John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities and of the Social Sciences *Currently accepting graduate student advisees ![Jesse McCarthy Headshot](/sites/g/files/omnuum1611/files/styles/hwp_4_5__320x400/public/english/files/nina_sparling_jesse_profile_headshot.png?itok=wackhHsB) location\_on Office: Barker 234 smartphone [617-495-3052](tel:617-495-3052) email Office hours: Tuesdays 1-3pm Education: Ph.D. in English, Princeton University 2018 M.A. in English, Princeton University 2013 B.A. English, Amherst College 2006 Interests: the novel, African American literature, African diaspora literatures, postwar or post-45 literary history, American literature, Black studies, modernism, aesthetics, film, intellectual history and the history of criticism, French literature, poetics and translation. Selected Works: *Books* - [*The Blue Period: Black Writing in the Early Cold War*](https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/author/M/J/au202293091.html) (University of Chicago Press, 2024) Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism (read a review in [*Critical Inquiry*](https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/734116)) - [*Who Will Pay Reparations on My Soul? Essays* ](https://wwnorton.com/books/9781631496486)(Liveright, 2021) 2022 Whiting Award Winner for Nonfiction - [*The Fugitivities: A Novel* ](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/611299/the-fugitivities-by-jesse-mccarthy/) (Melville House, 2021) *Edited Books* - Co-Editor with Henry Louis Gates Jr., *The Norton Critical Edition of Jean Toomer’s* *Cane* (W.W. Norton, forthcoming 2025) - Section Editor, [*The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, 4th Ed.*](https://seagull.wwnorton.com/africanamericanlit4) (W.W. Norton, 2025) - Co-Editor with Joshua Bennett, [*Minor Notes Vol. 1* ](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/702769/minor-notes-volume-1-by-edited-with-an-introduction-by-joshua-bennett-and-jesse-mccarthy-foreword-by-tracy-k-smith/)(Penguin, 2023) - Editor, W. E. B. Du Bois, [*The Souls of Black Folk* ](https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393870749)(W.W. Norton, 2022) *Peer-Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters* - “What Difference Does Paris Make in *The Ambassadors?*” [*Modern Philology*](https://doi.org/10.1086/734677), Volume 122, Number 4 (May 2025): 504-526. - “On Being Beside Oneself: Identity as a Limit to Aesthetic Judgment.” [*New Literary History*](https://doi.org/10.1353/nlh.2024.a953931), Volume 55, Numbers 3-4 (Summer/Autumn 2024): 369-387. - “Form and the Anticolonial Novel: William Gardner Smith’s *The Stone Face*.” [*Novel*](https://doi.org/10.1215/00295132-9614991) Volume 55, Number 1 (May 1, 2022): 61–94. - “The Essay, Abolition, and Racial Blackness.” [*The Cambridge Companion to The Essay*](https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009022255.009), edited by Kara Wittman and Evan Kindley, 126–40. Cambridge University Press, 2022. - “Postwar Literary Aesthetics.” [*Ralph Ellison in Context*](https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108773546.028), edited by Paul Devlin, 290–99; Cambridge University Press, 2022. - “The Blues in Print: Wright’s ‘Blueprint for Negro Writing’ Reconsidered.” [*Richard Wright in Context*](https://doi:10.1017/9781108773522.021), edited by Michael Nowlin, 205–14. Cambridge University Press, 2021. - “Proust au téléphone: placer la Recherche sur écoute.” [*Transposition*](https://doi.org/10.4000/transposition.1491) 6 (2016). *Media* You can listen to a conversation about my monograph *The Blue Period* on the New Book Network podcast [here](https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-blue-period). The *London Review of Books* hosted a [conversation](https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/the-lrb-podcast/blind-spots) about my essay collection *Who Will Pay Reparations on My Soul?* and I [talked](https://www.npr.org/2021/06/05/1003533677/in-jesse-mccarthys-debut-album-a-young-black-man-goes-in-search-of-himself) with NPR’s Scott Simon about my novel *The Fugitivities*. I also serve as an editor-at-large for the magazine [*The Point*](https://thepointmag.com/), and as a literary fiction editor for [*Public Books*](https://www.publicbooks.org/author/jesse-mccarthy/). *Digital Humanities* While a graduate student at Princeton I co-founded a Digital Humanities project with Professor Joshua Kotin based on the Sylvia Beach archives held at Princeton's Firestone Library called [The Shakespeare and Company Project](https://shakespeareandco.princeton.edu/). *Selected Literary and Cultural Essays* “[Return to my Native Land](https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2025/04/24/return-to-my-native-land-vincent-o-carter/)” *The New York Review of Books*, April 24, 2025. “[L’artiste et les marées de l’histoire](https://presences.hypotheses.org/files/2024/01/REVUE-AFROTROPES-DES-IMAGINAIRES-EN-MOUVEMENT.pdf).” *Afrotropes: des imaginaires en movement*, January 2024. “[The Emancipation of Sensibility](https://thepointmag.com/criticism/the-emancipation-of-sensibility/).” *The Point*, July 19, 2023. “[A New Biography of Tupac Shakur](https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2023/12/01/tupac-shakur-authorized-biography-staci-robinson-review/).” *The Washington Post*, December 1, 2023. “[B-Sides: John Keene’s *Annotations*](https://www.publicbooks.org/b-sides-john-keenes-annotations/)*,*” *Public Books*, October 14, 2021. “[This was our music, and our conscience](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/apr/22/this-was-our-music-and-our-conscience-how-i-fell-in-love-with-french-hip-hop),” *The Guardian*, April 22, 2021. “[On Integration,”](https://thepointmag.com/letter/on-integration/) co-authored with Jon Baskin. *The Point*, October 19, 2020. “[On Afropessimism](https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/on-afropessimism/).” *Los Angeles Review of Books*, July 20, 2020. “[Finding the Other: Toni Morrison’s Revolution](https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/toni-morrison-essays-fiction-humanism-book-review/).” *The Nation*, December 16, 2019. “[Toni Morrison’s Cosmos](https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/toni-morrison-cosmos-obit/).” *The Nation*, August 8, 2019. “[Notes on Trap](https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-32/essays/notes-on-trap/).” *n+1*, October 2018. “[Black Fire: American Intellectuals and the Black Radical Tradition](https://thepointmag.com/politics/black-fire/).” *The Point*, May 2018. “[Harlem is Everywhere](https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/harlem-is-everywhere-music-black-atlantic).” *Dissent*, April 2018. “[The Low End Theory](https://www.harvardmagazine.com/sites/default/files/pdf/2018/01-pdfs/0118-42.pdf).” *Harvard Magazine*, January 2018. “[A Kind of Freedom](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/books/review/a-kind-of-freedom-margaret-wilkerson-sexton.html).” *The New York Times Book Review*, September 5, 2017. “[In the Zone](https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/mathias-enards-alternative-cosmopolitanism/).” *The Nation*, August, 2017. “[Sad and Boujee](https://www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/sad-and-boujee/)” (on Percival Everett). *n+1*, June, 2017. “[The Way Forward in France](https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/way-forward-france/).” *The Nation*, June, 2017. “[Wideman’s Ghosts](https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/widemans-ghosts/).” *The Nation*, November, 2016. “[The Protest Poets](https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/protest-contemporary-black-poetry-claudia-rankine).” *Dissent*, September 2015. “[The Work of Art in the Age of Spectacular Reproduction](https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/the-work-of-art-in-the-age-of-spectacular-reproduction/).” *The Nation*, August 2015. “[Paul Beatty’s Savage Satire](https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/paul-beattys-savage-satire/).” *The Nation*, July 2015. - ## Role [Faculty](/role/faculty)