Samuel Cohen
Assistant Professor of English
University
of Missouri-Columbia
Presentations
2011
(Invited Lecture) “Literary History Is What Hurts: David Foster
Wallace and Influence,” Literary and Cultural Studies Colloquium,
Department of English, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, November
“‘News of the sorry world’: Contemporary Politics
and the Transhistorical Fantastic,” for panel, “Serious Play
in the Political Novel,” at the annual meeting of the Midwest Modern
Language Association, St. Louis, MO, November (panel organizer and chair)
“Really?
Irreal Realism and the Contemporary Imaginary,” for panel, “Mixing
It Up: Contemporary American Fictional Hybridity and the Fight for the
Real,” at Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present’s
ASAP/3: Arts of the Planet, Pittsburgh, PA, October (panel organizer and chair)
(Invited participant) “In Defense
of History,” for roundtable, “Fin de Millennial Ethics and
the American Novel,” at ASAP/3, Pittsburgh, PA, October
(Invited Respondent) Kristiaan Versluys, “9/11:
The Discursive Responses,” MU International Center’s 9/11 10th
Anniversary Lecture, September
(Invited Lecture) "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," at “Conceptions of Collectivity in
Contemporary American Literature,” Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz,
Germany, July 2011
(Invited Lecture) “How to End a True Cold War Story,” at
“Into Sunlight: The Impact of War on the Social Body from the Vietnam Era
to the Present,” Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY, April 2011
“It’s
Business Time,” for roundtable, “The Open Professoriate: Public Intellectuals on
the Social Web,” at the annual meeting of the Modern Language
Association, Los Angeles, CA, 2011 (subject of news article, “An Open,
Digital Professoriate,” Inside
Higher Ed 10 January 2011 <http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/01/10/mla_embraces_digital_humanities_and_blogging>)
2010
“Getting
It Published: Figuring Out How and Where to Place Scholarly Work” panel,
at the annual meeting of the Midwest Modern Language Association, Chicago, IL,
2010 (panel organizer, chair, and participant), November 2010
(Invited Lecture) “Maus,
Trauma, and Closure,” Elms College, Chicopee, MA, October 2010
(Invited Lecture) “So Beautiful, So Stupid, So American,” at
“Occasional Music: A Symposium on the Work of Jonathan Lethem,”
School of Arts, Birkbeck College, University of London, London, United Kingdom,
July 2010
(Invited Lecture) “‘Big Winner’: Nuclear Fear in the U.S.
Before and After 9/11,” MU Libraries Faculty Lecture Series, February
2010
2009
“The Legacy of David Foster
Wallace,” roundtable participant, at the annual meeting of the Modern
Language Association, Philadelphia, PA, December 2009
“Infinite Jest and the Problem of
Ending,” at the fourth annual symposium of Post•45, MU, November
2009
“At the Far Frontiers of the Monroe
Doctrine: Joan Didion’s The Last
Thing He Wanted,” for panel, “Political Fictions: Joan Didion
and the Political Novel,” at the Annual meeting of the Midwest Modern
Language Association, St. Louis,
MO, November 2009 (panel organizer and
chair)
(Invited Lecture) Keynote Speaker, BAKEA International Symposium of Western Cultural and Literary Studies, Pamukkale
University, Denizli, Turkey, October 7-9, 2009 (invitation declined)
(Invited Lecture) “‘Big Winner’: Nuclear Fear in the U.S.
Before and After 9/11,” Colloquium Series, Department of Sociology, MU,
September 11, 2009
(Invited
Lecture) “DeLillo after the End
of History,” Graduate Student Welcome Day, Department of English, MU,
2009
2008
“A
Terminally Bad Time: The American Historical Imagination and the End,”
for the Permanent Section on Literary Criticism, “Criticism After the
Cold War,” at the annual meeting of the Midwest Modern Language
Association, Minneapolis, MN, November 2008 (panel organizer and chair)
(Invited Lecture) “The Bloody Crossroads: Writing about
Politics,” Professional Writing Seminar, Department of English, MU, 2008
(Invited Lecture) “Philip Roth’s American Pastoral,”
“Between the Wars,” Scholar in Residence lectures, Congregation
Sinai,
2007
“No
Alternative: 'The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation' and the False Promises of
Genre” for the meeting of the Division on Nonfiction Prose Studies
Excluding Biography and Autobiography,
“Alternative Approaches to Telling History,” at
the annual meeting of the Modern
Language Association,
“Teaching
Uncertainty,” for the meeting of the Division on the Teaching of
Literature, “Why Do We Teach Literature, Anyway?” at the annual
meeting of the Modern Language Association,
“Realism
in Theory of the Novel,” for the Permanent Section on Literary Criticism,
“Realism in Theory,” at the annual meeting of the Midwest Modern
Language Association,
“On
Minimalism and Literary History,” for panel, “Maximum
Minimalism,” at the International Conference on Narrative,
(Invited Lecture) Response, “Being Frank,” play by Kevin
Babbitt, Dir. Heather Carver, Corner Playhouse, MU, February 3, 2007
2006
“Diminished
Expectations: Minimalism and the Crisis of American Confidence,” for
panel, “What We Talk About When, Etc.: Historicizing Minimalism,”
at the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association,
(panel organizer)
“The
Novel in a Time of Terror,” at “‘Beyond Ground Zero’:
9/11 and the Futures of Critical Thought,” the John Douglas Taylor
Conference,
(Invited Lecture) Special Commentary, Discussion of
Guy Adams’ Unmasking Administrative Evil, Center
for Arts & Humanities 2006 Tuesdays Noon Faculty Colloquia, MU, September
19, 2006
(Invited Lecture) Panelist, “Roth Bound: A Roundtable on the Occasion
of the Library of America Editions,” English Department Colloquium, MU,
2006
(Invited Lecture) “The Novel in a Time of Terror: History and
Contemporary American Fiction,” English Graduate Student Association
Faculty Speaker Lecture, MU, 2006
(Invited Lecture) “Maus,
Trauma, and Postmemory,” Art History 2850, Introduction to American
Visual Culture, MU, 2006
(Invited Lecture) “Politics and Practice in the Teaching of
Composition,” English 8010, Theory and Practice of Composition, MU, 2006
2005
“History is What Heals,” for panel,
“Future Anterior: History, Time, and the Event in Post-World War II
United States Fiction,” at the annual meeting of the Modern Language
Association, Washington, D. C., 2005 (panel organizer)
Respondent,
“Poetics and History,” at the annual meeting of the Midwest Modern
Language Association,
“American
Trauma,” at the Twentieth-Century Literature and Culture Conference,
University of
2004
“In the Lake of the Woods and
History,” for panel, “The Trauma of the Present: Historicizing
Recent Fiction,” at the annual meeting of the Modern Language
Association,
(Invited Lecture) “Walter Benn Michaels, The New Historicism, and
Me,” for colloquium on Walter Benn Michael’s The Shape of the Signifier, English Department Colloquium, MU, 2004
1996-2003
“The
Novel of Retrospect in the American Nineties,” at the Twentieth-Century
Literature Conference,
“Tinkering toward WAC
Utopia,” at Sixth National Writing Across the Curriculum Conference, Rice
University,
“‘Fettered by History’:
Philip Roth’s American Pastoral
and the Ironies of Historical Representation,” at the annual meeting of
the American Literature Association, Long Beach,
“American
“Composition
and Construction: Belief, Identity, and the Teaching of Writing,” at the
annual Conference on College Composition and Communication,
“What's the Subject: Identity and
the Composition Teacher,” 21st Annual Conference of the CUNY Association
of Writing Supervisors,
“’There
ain’t no such view in the world’: Jewett's Constructive
Realism,” at the annual meeting of the Northeast Modern Language
Association,
“Howells, Jewett, and
Realism,” at the annual New York Conference on Language and Literature,
State
| Department of English || College of Arts and Science
|| 
University
of Missouri-Columbia |