Josh Lambert

Sophia Moses Robison Professor of Jewish Studies and English

Contact
Phone:
+1 (781) 2831840
Email:
jl103@wellesley.edu
Department
Jewish Studies
Comparative Literary Studies

Links

Research, writing, and teaching at the intersection of Jewish Studies and American literary and cultural studies.

As a researcher, I seek out areas in which Jews and Jewishness played important and understudied roles in the development of U.S. culture, with the aim of helping specialists in Jewish Studies and American Studies, as well as a broader reading audience, understand 19th-, 20th- and 21st-century cultural history in more complex and rigorous ways.

My books Unclean Lips (NYU, 2014) and The Literary Mafia (Yale, 2022) each take up a different area in which Jewishness profoundly shaped the direction of modern and contemporary life in the U.S.: in the former, around questions of obscenity and sexual representation, and in the latter, in the development of the book publishing industry. I’m currently researching a new book, an expansive narrative history of Jews and Jewishness in U.S. literature and culture that rejects the patriarchal and heteronormative biases that have characterized such histories in the past, and that centers instead the perspectives of women, LGBTQ+ people, and people of color. (Imagine, instead of Abraham Cahan, Philip Roth, and Woody Allen, a broad survey of U.S. Jewish culture anchored by Gertrude Stein, Muriel Rukeyser, Jo Sinclair, Sammy Davis, Jr., Fran Ross, Adrienne Rich, Paula Vogel, and Sass Orol.)

As a teacher, I aim to demonstrate the relevance of American Jews’ experiences, texts, and ideas to a wide range of academic and cultural concerns. In other words, I try to make the case that anyone who cares about the history of literature, popular culture, and the arts needs to spend at least a little time thinking seriously about Jews and Jewishness.

I teach a wide range of conventional and unconventional materials, including fiction, poetry, nonfiction, drama, comics and graphic novels, film, television, radio and podcasts, journalism, legal decisions, video games, and archival materials. I aim to have my syllabi reflect Jewish and non-Jewish diversity and emphasize female and nonbinary voices. At the end of my courses, my expectation is that students will take with them increased confidence as interpreters of American and Jewish literature, culture, and history, and a set of texts and cultural objects that will continue to speak to them and challenge them.

I have served on the board of directors of the Association for Jewish Studies and on the Executive Committee of the American Jewish Historical Society, and serve on the editorial boards of several academic journals. I judge fiction prizes regularly, and I write book reviews and essays for general audiences in publications like the New York Times Book Review, Jewish Currents, and Lilith.

I never get tired of thinking or talking about baking, video games, and Paris.

Education

  • B.A., Harvard University
  • Ph.D., University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

Current and upcoming courses

JWST 118 Can Writing Change the World? The Examples of Emma Goldman and Gertrude Stein

WRIT118

Emma Goldman (1869-1940) and Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) were Jewish women who were wildly famous in their lifetimes for their political and cultural radicalism. Goldman promoted anarchism at a time when anarchists engaged in militant political action, and Stein wrote innovative poems that influenced the course of writing in English. Both created unique, powerful forms of writing to deliver their complex and often controversial ideas. They used these unconventional forms to challenge readers to think and act differently. In this class, we will explore these challenging texts and the innovative ways of thought and action that they offer. From our own moment of extraordinary instability and cultural transformation, we will consider the models Goldman and Stein offer us for engaging the world and changing it with the writing we do.

  • Jews and Jewishness in American Literature

    JWST270

    The roles played by Jews in the development of modern American literature are complex and contradictory. Influential American authors expressed anti-Semitic views in their correspondence and work, and prejudice excluded Jews from many literary and cultural opportunities well into the 20th century. Nonetheless Jewish publishers, editors, critics, and writers were extraordinarily influential in the development of the field, founding leading publishing houses, supporting freedom of expression and movements like modernism and postmodernism, and writing some of the most influential and lasting works in the tradition. In this course, we will explore the ways Jews have been represented in American literature and their roles in modernizing and expanding the field. Fulfills the English Department’s Diversity of Literatures in English requirement. (ENG 270 and JWST 270 are cross-listed courses.)