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Professor Josh Cohen
Position held:
Professor of Modern Literary Theory
Phone:
+44 (0)20 7919 7445
Email:
j.cohen (@gold.ac.uk)
Room 402
4th Floor
Warmington Tower
Office hours:
Wed 14.00-15.00
On leave Summer Term 2012
Teaching
Convenor, Pathway in Modern Literary Theory for MA in Comparative Literary Studies. I teach options for the MA on Literature and Philosophy and Freud.
Areas of supervision
Current areas of PhD supervision:- Holocaust Literature
- McSweeney’s Journal
- Raymond Carver and psychoanalysis
- 'Posthumous' literature
- Levinas and de Man
- 'Phantom limbs' in psychoanalysis and literature
- Creativity and knowledge in psychoanalysis
- Poetry and inspiration (joint supervision)
- Writing and trauma (joint supervision)
Professional activities
- Member of British Comparative Literature Association, Modern Languages Association of America, Society for European Philosophy, International Association for Philosophy and Literature
- External examinership for BA in Education Studies, University of Winchester, 2002-2005
- Organiser of seminar series in Jewish Textualities (1999-2002), and of conferences on Evil and Suffering in Jewish Tradition (2002) and Wallace Stevens (2004).
- Visiting Scholar, Center for Jewish Studies, University of Harvard, Autumn 1999
Research interests
My key interests are in psychoanalysis (I am a practising clinician as well as an academic), literature and philosophy (especially Blanchot, Adorno and Benjamin), and American literature since the mid-nineteenth century (especially Melville, James, Stevens and contemporary fiction), and much of my work is at the interface of these areas. I’m currently working on a book to be published by Granta called The Private Life, about privacy in psychoanalysis, literature and contemporary culture.