Cohen Ralph

Ralph Cohen, who was among the most eminent critical thinkers and educators of twentieth-century America, has died in Charlottesville. New Literary History, the award-winning journal of theory and interpretation that he founded at the University of Virginia in 1969 and edited for 40 years, was a new type of learned journal that shaped and normalized the role of theory in writing about literary and cultural problems.Introducing the theoretical journal-essay into literary studies, New Literary History became a model for the shift in critical discourse, fostering numerous such journals and transforming many existing journals. When Mr. Cohen stepped down as editor in 2008, W. J. T. Mitchell, editor of the journal Critical Inquiry, called him "the father of criticism and theory in our time."Through translations into English, often for the first time, the journal introduced numerous thinkers from France, Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Russia, China, and elsewhere to an Anglo-American academic audience. In turn, New Literary History became the first English language literary journal to be translated into Chinese.Prestigious German theorist Wolfgang Iser wrote of the journal, "the procedures in modern technology and model-building, the basic fabric of social institutions as well as of interpretations, the patterns of culture and everyday life, the interrelations of interpretation and creation were only a few of the themes examined in various issues from differing viewpoints and disciplines."For more than 60 years he was a professor of English-at CCNY, Columbia University, UCLA, the University of Virginia-specializing in eighteenth-century British literature and philosophy, though his intellectual reach ranged well beyond British literary studies. Mr. Cohen's development of an original theory of genre connected literary theory with analysis of historical change across the disciplines.A fellow of both the American Academy and the British Academy, Mr. Cohen was the recipient of numerous fellowships and scholarly awards and was visiting professor at universities across the United States, as well as many international universities, including those in Toronto, Konstanz, Budapest, Geneva, Edinburgh, Lisbon, Turin, Tel Aviv, Ljubljana, Dubrovnik, Canberra, Jinan, and Dalian.He considered himself first and foremost a teacher, and his celebrated transactive classroom strategies frequently attracted colleagues to his courses, as well as devoted students. His preternatural ability to illuminate and account for diverse positions on theory at professional conferences was legendary.Mr. Cohen's own scholarship ranged from Dryden to Pope to Thomson to Hume, as well as the entirety of literary criticism and theory from the eighteenth century to the present. His singular book on the language of criticism, The Art of Discrimination (1964), "a metacritical study with far-reaching implications," wrote University of Chicago Professor Frances Ferguson, "is in a category by itself." This analysis of two hundred years of critical reception of Thomson's long nature poem, The Seasons, followed by a postformalist interpretation of the poem, gave way to the periodical seasons of a collaborative, academic enterprise in which the journal essay became the model for a new literary history. Mr. Cohen published five additional books, all collections of scholarly essays by others. In keeping with his extraordinary modesty, he never collected any of his more than 140 essays.Mr. Cohen extended his activist procedures throughout the modern research university, initiating the Commonwealth Center for Literary and Cultural Change (1988-1995) at the University of Virginia. This interdisciplinary research center, wrote Mr. Cohen, "had as its primary aim the study of change and continuity in individuals and institutions in the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences." It stimulated the establishment of other centers aimed at reintegrating the disciplines, based on shared problems, and redefining higher education for the twenty-first century. From 1988-1995 Mr. Cohen served as the first chair of the international Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes.His vigorous presence in the English department, along with the dynamic existence of New Literary History and the Commonwealth Center, brought international recognition to the University of Virginia. Former president of the University, John Casteen, noted that the journal "has served a dual purpose: it has been both the touchstone for the community of scholars of literature within this one university and a global forum for wide-ranging scholarly discussion and debate among writers and critics in every place and of every persuasion."His recent scholarship took him to James Madison University where his innovative concept of technology led to the establishment of the Cohen Center for the Study of Technological Humanism. The visiting speaker's series, which the Center sponsors at JMU, will resume for the spring term this week.Ralph Cohen was born to Polish immigrant parents in Paterson, New Jersey, February 23, 1917. He graduated in 1937 from CCNY, served in the Army's Signal Corps from 1942-1946, received his MA from Columbia's Teachers College in 1946, taught at CCNY from 1947-1950, and received his PhD from Columbia University in 1952. Before the war, he met and married Libby Okun, his wife of more than 70 years. Ms. Cohen died at 99 in 2013. Mr. Cohen was 99 Tuesday.In 1950 the Cohens and their two children, Ruth and David, left New York for California where Mr. Cohen took a position in the English department at UCLA. At the time he was the sole Jewish member. In 1967 he joined the faculty of the University of Virginia, becoming William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of English. In 2010 he became Provost Distinguished Professor at JMU where he taught until his death.Though not religious, the Cohens faithfully observed Seder, following their own "Cohen Haggadah," which was adapted each year and edited to include all members of the attending Jewish and non-Jewish family. The annual highlights of "The Father Speaks" and the singings of the Malka made for a series of sobering and joyous events.Mr. Cohen is survived by his daughter and son-in-law, David B. Morris, and son and daughter-in-law, Mary Cohen, all of Charlottesville.Graveside services will be conducted Thursday, February 25, 2016, 11 a.m., at the Hebrew Cemetery, Charlottesville. A memorial will be held at the University of Virginia later this year.Condolences may be sent to his family at www.hillandwood.com.