I had thought about writing the previous post in such a way that I could submit it to the New York Times op-ed page. Obviously, I chickened out. Or, more to the point, I overthought it. I was overcome with questions and doubts that stymied my perception of the piece as something that was editable into a proper op-ed piece for a proper periodical. So these are some of the things I have to think about as I try to move forward with my goal of doing some writing for a general audience now that I no longer have to worry about it all “counting*”:
— How much to balance classroom anecdata with the meat of the matter? In a certain respect, students can figure in a popular piece as the proxy for the audience. But does that make it all too schoolyard-y?
— What makes an anecdote interesting or worthy of publication, and where? This piece was hysterical, all anecdote, and not something that would ever have occurred to me to submit to the Times, even in the service of a subtly-argued larger point.
— How do we choose a publication that will on the one hand allow for depth in writing but on the other hand reach a wide audience? What publications would put up with our view of the medieval as current? How hard to we have to try? How hard to we force the analogy?
— How far does our expertise go? How does our definition of our own field factor in? I’m not an art historian, I don’t work on central Europe, and I don’t consider my work primarily to be a part of Jewish Studies (regardless of what everyone tells me). But realistically, the history of the six-pointed star in Jewish and Islamic contexts is basically in my wheelhouse. Would I have really had the authority to write this for a proper publication? Would it have been responsible for me to write about something that I wouldn’t consider to be in my immediate area of research? Do our very narrow academic definitions of what we do and where we are experts in limit our writing for a general audience? Should they?
— How much will people in the field be willing to read charitably and understand that one writes differently for a popular audience than for a scholarly audience rather than condemning us for oversimplifying? Why does this still matter to me now that I have tenure?
— *What counts? Why? Why not?
— Trolls? Trolls.
— Ultimately, what is the purpose of popular writing? The question I’m really getting at with this broad one is this: How do we balance arguing an opinion, arguing an academic point, and elucidating the public?