Samuel Cohen
Assistant Professor of English
University
of Missouri-Columbia
PRESENTATIONS
[“The Legacy of David Foster
Wallace,” roundtable participant, at the annual meeting of the Modern
Language Association, Philadelphia, PA, 2009 (co-organizer)]
[“Infinite Jest and the Problem of Ending,” at the fourth
annual symposium of Post•45, UM, 2009
Post•45 is a collective of
younger scholars working on American literature and culture since 1945. It has
met annually—at Concordia, Harvard, and Yale—to discuss new work in
the field. ]
[“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, 2009 (panel organizer and chair)]
“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, 2008 (panel organizer and chair)
“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, Chicago,
IL, 2007
“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,
Chicago, IL, 2007
“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, Cleveland, OH, 2007 (panel
organizer and chair)
“On Minimalism and Literary History,” for panel,
“Maximum Minimalism,” at the International Conference on Narrative,
Washington, D.C., 2007
“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, Philadelphia, PA, 2006 (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, McMaster University,
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, 2006
Panelist, “Roth Bound: A Roundtable on the Occasion of the
Library of America Editions,” English Department Colloquium, UM, 2006
“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, Milwaukee, WI, 2005
“American Trauma,” at the Twentieth-Century Literature
and Culture Conference, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky, 2005
(panel chair)
“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, Philadelphia, PA, 2004
“Walter Benn Michaels, The New Historicism, and Me,”
for colloquium on Walter Benn Michael’s The Shape of the Signifier, English Department Colloquium, UM, 2004
“The Novel of Retrospect in the American Nineties,” at
the Twentieth-Century Literature Conference, University of Louisville,
Louisville, Kentucky, 2003
“Tinkering toward WAC Utopia,” at Sixth National
Writing Across the Curriculum Conference, Rice University, Houston, Texas, 2002
“‘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, California, 2000
“American Paradise: Roth, Morrison, and the Post-Cold War
Historical Novel,” at the annual meeting of the Northeast Modern Language
Association, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1999
“Composition and Construction: Belief, Identity, and the
Teaching of Writing,” at the annual Conference on College Composition and
Communication, Atlanta, Georgia, 1999
“What's the Subject: Identity and the Composition
Teacher,” 21st Annual Conference of the CUNY Association of Writing
Supervisors, New York, New York, 1997
“’There ain’t no such view in the world’:
Jewett's Constructive Realism,” at the annual meeting of the Northeast
Modern Language Association, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1997
“Howells, Jewett, and Realism,” at the annual New York
Conference on Language and Literature, State University of New York, Cortland,
1996
INVITED LECTURES/INTERVIEWS
Keynote Speaker, BAKEA International Symposium of Western
Cultural and Literary Studies, Pamukkale University, Denizli, Turkey, October
7-9, 2009 (invitation declined)
“DeLillo after the End of
History,” Graduate Student Welcome Day, Department of English, UM, 2009
“The Bloody Crossroads: Writing about Politics,”
Professional Writing Seminar, English Department, UM, 2008
Interview on David Foster Wallace, “Off the
Clock,” KBIA Radio, Columbia, Missouri, September 19, 2008
“Philip Roth’s American Pastoral,”
“Between the Wars,” Scholar in Residence lectures, Congregation Sinai, Milwaukee, WI, 2008
Response, “Being Frank,” play by Kevin Babbitt, Dir.
Heather Carver, Corner Playhouse, UM, February 3, 2007
Special Commentary, Discussion of Guy
Adams’ Unmasking Administrative Evil, Center
for Arts & Humanities 2006 Tuesdays Noon Faculty Colloquia, UM, September 19,
2006
Interview on T. C. Boyle, “Thinking Out Loud,” KBIA Radio,
Columbia, Missouri, June 13, 2006
“The Novel in a Time of Terror: History and Contemporary
American Fiction,” English Graduate Student Association Faculty Speaker
Lecture, UM, 2006
“Maus, Trauma, and
Postmemory,” Art History 2850, Introduction to American Visual Culture,
UM, 2006
“Politics and Practice in the Teaching of
Composition,” English 8010, Theory and Practice of Composition, UM, 2006
| Department of English || College of Arts and Science
|| 
University
of Missouri-Columbia |