Jesse McCarthy is an assistant professor in the departments of English and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. He is currently completing a book project, “The Blue Period: Black Writing in the Early Cold War, 1945–1965,” a study of the relationship between aesthetic strategy and political commitment in Black literature in the decades between the end of World War II and the rise of the Black Power movement. His essays and reviews on race, literature, politics, and music have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, The Nation, n+1, Dissent, and The Point, where he is also a contributing editor. His first book, a collection of essays entitled Who Will Pay Reparations on My Soul?, is forthcoming from Liveright in spring 2021.