Portfolio | Jacob Potash

Cultural Criticism & Essays

• Rap and the American Religion (2025)
  An essay arguing that the theological underpinnings of American evangelicalism are key to understanding the persona, contradictions and power of a major female rapper. (Published in Blind Field: a Journal of Cultural Inquiry)
• An Anatomy of AI Criticism (2025)
  A critical reflection on the promises and ideological glitches of Large Language Models, based on a collaborative book-writing experiment with an AI. (Forthcoming, Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge) Full text available upon request.
• Anti-Pop Pop: On 'Joanne' and the 2016 Election (2016)
  An analysis of the parallel "anti-establishment" rhetoric in Lady Gaga's musical turn and Donald Trump's presidential campaign. (Published in the Yale Daily News) Included in a select bibliography by the peer-reviewed journal American Music (Vol. 35, No. 4) for its value in teaching public musicology.
• The Pop Reformation: Music, Ownership, Power (2016)
  A look at how three of pop's biggest artists leveraged exclusive streaming releases to assert economic and creative autonomy, echoing the disruptive power of the printing press. (Published in the Yale Herald) Praised as "smart work" by Dr. Elizabeth Alexander and cited in the Wikipedia entry for D'Angelo.
• 'I own your child': Kanye West and the Family Spectacle (2017)
  An examination of rap and reality TV as America's most honest art forms, exploring how Kim Kardashian and Kanye West turned family life into a new frontier of commercial art. (Published in the Yale Herald)
• Review: Marilynne Robinson’s ‘The Givenness of Things’ (2015)
  A review of the essay collection, exploring Robinson’s defense of faith against scientific positivism and the ironies of her mainstream cultural moment. (Published in the Yale Literary Magazine)
• Indictment of Innocence: Philip Roth's American Pastoral (2014)
  An analysis of the novel's narrative structure and its function as a conservative critique of American liberalism, utopianism and the legacy of 1960s radicalism.

Personal Essays & Memoir

• Since I Do Not Know a Man (2025)
  A long-form essay weaving together vignettes on love, class, art and faith, tracing a search for personal meaning from Hollywood to Martha's Vineyard and back. Full text available upon request. Currently under consideration for publication.
• Treasures of the Snow (2025)
  A memoir reflecting on a year of academic and personal crisis at Cambridge, exploring themes of isolation, transgression and unlikely paths to self-discovery. Full text available upon request. Currently under consideration for publication.
• No Special Place: on having a famous brother (2024)
  A personal essay on memory, digital celebrity, and political idealism, framed by the experience of having a brother who becomes a prominent online activist.
  
  

Film & Creative Prose

• TIGER TIGER (Short Film) (2023)
  Co-wrote and produced a short film starring Sydney Lemmon. Honored at Rooftop Films, New/Next Festival, Cannes Indie Shorts Awards, Moving Pictures Festival, London Director Awards.
• The Philosophy of Dress (Feature Film) (2021-2025)
  Co-wrote and produced a feature film starring Sydney Lemmon, Romy Reiner, Jake Weary, Clara McGregor. A troubled designer and her magnetic influencer-muse collaborate on a single dress, but their artistic bond unravels into toxic obsession.
  (Completed, seeking sales representation)
• Emails to Danny (2025)
  A lyrical prose piece, presented as a series of fragmented emails, exploring intimacy, desire and the construction of a relationship through language. (Forthcoming, The Manifest-Station) Full text available upon request.

Editorial & Publishing

• Online Ideas: essays (Co-Author) (2022)
  A collection of essays, co-authored with Hugo Blondel, offering a critical and personal lens on pop culture, politics and theology during the pandemic era.
• Group: an anthology (Editor) (2022)
  An anthology of images, interviews, poetry and fiction that sketches the shape of a community and a cultural moment, originally published in weekly volumes throughout 2020.

Literary Scholarship

• ‘First Fruits’: Priority in Three Miltonic Beginnings (2018)
  An academic paper on John Milton’s Paradise Lost, analyzing how the epic repeatedly establishes and redefines its own origin point through complex biblical and rhetorical allusions. Awarded the John H. Curtis Prize by the Yale University English Department.
• Shakespeare Unvalued: Love’s Labor’s Lost and Milton’s Early Poetry (2018)
  An essay exploring John Milton’s literary polemic against Shakespeare and how he adopts and inverts tropes from Love's Labor's Lost to assert his own artistic authority.

Formative Essays (2013-2016)

• The Migrant's Calling: Scripture, Authority, Dislocation (2016)
  Drawing parallels between anxieties of authority in the Bible, Homer and US politics, this piece explores the creative and prophetic power of the exilic figure, from the Abrahamic narrative to James and Faulkner.
• The American Dilemma: Two Accounts (2016)
  A comparative reading of Hart Crane’s “The Bridge” and Henry James’s “The Europeans,” analyzing their contrasting visions of American culture, technology and tragedy.

Theater Criticism (Yale Daily News, 2014-2017)

As a critic for the Yale Daily News (2014-2017), I reviewed a range of student plays and professional productions.

• A Primordial Myth: David Harrower's 'Knives in Hens'
  An analysis of the play's mythic structure, exploring its engagement with themes of language, knowledge, gender and liberation in a primordial human community. (Original title: "God, sex, death: small-town revelation at Yale Cabaret")
• The Universal vs. The Generic: Thornton Wilder's 'Our Town'
  An examination of the tension between the play's universalist ambitions and the challenges of contemporary staging. (Original title: "Talk of Our Town")
• Deforming Realism: Jackie Sibblies Drury's 'Really'
  A critical reflection on a new work, connecting its theatrical innovations to broader academic debates about race, history and the digital humanities. (Original title: "Drury Isn’t Dreary")
• The Architecture of Millennial Malaise: 'Slouch'
  An analysis of the play's intricate linguistic structure and its portrayal of contemporary anxiety, ambition and depression. (Original title: "Slouching through the City")
• Genius and Its Discontents: Steve Martin's 'Picasso at the Lapin Agile'
  An exploration of the play's comedic treatment of genius, history, and the competing claims of art and science at the dawn of the 20th century. (Original title: "Steve Martin Paints His Own 'Picasso'")
• The Perils of Representation: 'Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992'
  An analysis of a production of Anna Deavere Smith's work, grappling with the conceptual challenges and political implications of color-blind casting in a play about the Rodney King riots. (Original title: "Far from Black and White")