Samuel Cohen

Samuel Cohen
Associate Professor; Associate Chair English Department
208 Tate Hall
Education

PhD 2003, The Graduate Center, The City University of New York

Research and Teaching

Twentieth- and twenty-first century American literature and culture

Samuel Cohen teaches courses in twentieth- and twenty-first century American literature. He is the author of After the End of History: American Fiction in the 1990s (University of Iowa Press, 2009), coeditor of The Legacy of David Foster Wallace (University of Iowa Press, 2012) and The Clash Takes on the World: Transnational Perspectives on The Only Band That Matters, co-edited with James Peacock (Bloomsbury, 2017), and Series Editor of The New American Canon: The Iowa Series in Contemporary Literature and Culture. He is also author of 50 Essays: A Portable Anthology, sixth edition (Bedford/St. Martin's, 2023) and coauthor of a literature anthology, Literature: The Human Experience, thirteenth edition (Bedford/St. Martin's, 2018). He has received the Davidson Faculty Fellowship, the Director of Graduate Studies Outstanding Contribution Award, the Gold Chalk Award from the Graduate Professional Council, the Graduate Student Association Outstanding Graduate Faculty Award, the English Graduate Student Association Outstanding Graduate Faculty Award, and the Provost's Outstanding Junior Faculty Teaching Award. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the Association of Departments of English.

Awards and Honors

Provost Great Books Program, MU, 2024

Arts & Science Writing Fellows Program, MU, 2023

Davidson Faculty Fellowship, Department of English, MU, 2019-2020

Director of Graduate Studies Outstanding Contribution Award, MU, 2013

Gold Chalk Award, Graduate Professional Council, MU, 2011

Graduate Student Association Outstanding Graduate Faculty Award, MU, 2011

English Graduate Student Association Outstanding Graduate Faculty Award, MU, 2011

Provost's Outstanding Junior Faculty Teaching Award, MU, 2008

Selected Publications

“Life During Wartime: Lethem’s Chronic City.” Forthcoming in Twentieth-Century Literature.

Review of Writing Backwards: Historical Fiction and the Reshaping of the American Canon, by
Alexander Manshel. Forthcoming in Modern Fiction Studies.

Review of Telling America’s Story to the World: Literature, Internationalism, Cultural Diplomacy, by Harilaos Stecopolous. Forthcoming in Genre.

50 Essays: A Portable Anthology, 7th ed. (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's), 2023

“University Control or, Conditions and Tendencies,” review of Julia Schleck, Dirty Knowledge: Academic Freedom in the Age of Neoliberalism, in Provocations 6 (October 2022)

“The 2016 Project,” In These Times 6.1, Modernism/Modernity Print Plus, 26 May 2021

“Scholarly Publishing’s Last Stand,” The Chronicle Review 22 May 2018

“Washington Bullets: The Clash and Vietnam.” The Clash Takes on the World: Transnational Perspectives on The Only Band That Matters, ed. Samuel Cohen, James Peacock, London: Bloomsbury, 2017

The Clash Takes on the World: Transnational Perspectives on The Only Band That Matters, co-edited with James Peacock. London: Bloomsbury, 2017

"The Whiteness of David Foster Wallace," solicited chapter for Postmodern Literature and Race, eds. Len Platt and Sara Upstone (Cambridge University Press, 2015), 228-43.

Literature: The Human Experience, 13th ed., with Richard Abcarian and Marvin Klotz (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's), 2018.

“‘How helpless a person can be’ Sex, Art, and Politics in DeLillo's Baader-Meinhof,” invited submission, Voices in Italian Americana 23.2 (2013), 13-19.

"Fables of American Collectivity Circa 2005: Chris Bachelder's U.S.!, Lydia Millet's Oh Pure and Radiant Heart, and George Saunders's Brief and Frightening Reign of  Phil," invited submission, special issue, Amerikastudien/American Studies 57.2  (2012), 207-20.

"'To Wish to Try to Sing to the Next Generation': Infinite Jest's History," The Legacy of David Foster Wallace. Ed. Samuel Cohen and Lee Konstantinou (University  of Iowa Press 2012).

The Legacy of David Foster Wallace, coedited with Lee Konstantinou. University of Iowa Press, 2012

After the End of History: American Fiction in the 1990s. University of Iowa Press, 2009

"The Novel in a Time of Terror: Middlesex, History, and Contemporary American Fiction." Twentieth-Century Literature special issue, "After Postmodernism," 53.3 (Fall 2007)

"Triumph and Trauma: In the Lake of the Woods and History." Clio: Journal of Literature, History, and the Philosophy of History 36.2 (Spring 2007)

"Mason & Dixon & the Ampersand." Twentieth-Century Literature 48.3 (Fall 2002)

"Tinkering toward WAC Utopia." Journal of Basic Writing 21.2 (Fall 2002)

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