J. Laurence Cohen, PhD
Current Position
Lecturer, Department of English, University of Georgia
Education
PhD in English, Emory University 2019
B.A. Summa cum laude in English and Biblical/Theological Studies, Wheaton College 2010
Book
Excavating Exodus: Biblical Typology and Racial Solidarity in African American Literature Clemson University Press, 2021
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
“Arboreal Saviors and Landscape Religion: Cultivating Eco-Postsecularity in The Overstory and The Mars Trilogy.” Religion & Literature. Forthcoming.
“Superman as the Measure of All Things: Black Gods and White Saviours in Watchmen and Doomsday Clock.” Literature and Theology. 2023.
“Exodus and Typological Plasticity in Delany, Melville, and Stowe.” ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture. Vol. 64. Issue 4. 2018. 604-643.
“Shining Inward: The Blind Seer, Fanny Crosby, and Education for the Blind” Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies 11.1 2017. 53-68.
Invited Talks
“Martin Delany’s Liberation Theology,” Wheaton College Philosophy Department, February 2022
Other Publications
“A Fully WOVEN Artifact: Promo Video” in WOVENText 2021. 220-221.
Contributor to “The Year in Conferences—2019.” ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture. 66.1 2020. 133-213.
Teaching Experience
University of Georgia
English 2330 American Literature: from the Beginnings to 1914
English 1102
English 1050H
Georgia Institute of Technology
English 1102, “Compelling Comics” Spring 2022
English 1102, “Science Fact and Fiction” Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021
English 1102, “Race and Religion from Abolition to the Civil Rights Movement” Spring 2020
English 1101, “Serious Satire” Fall 2019
Morehouse College
English 102, “The Art of Commentary” Spring 2019
English 102, “Black Critics, Black Culture” Fall 2018
Emory University
English 213W Fictions of Human Desire, “Art and Immortality” Spring 2018
English 181 Writing about Literature, “Time Travel” Spring 2016
English 101 Expository Writing, “Writing through Parody” Fall 2015
Teaching Assistant, English 363W “Discourse Analysis, Document Design” Spring 2015
Teaching Assistant, English 250 “American Literature: Beginnings to 1865” Fall 2014
Conference Presentations
“Interfaith Solidarity in the Racial Justice Haggadah” Rhetoric and Religious Traditions, University of Memphis, October 2023
“Podcasting and Hyper Particularity” Podcasting Pedagogy Symposium, Georgia Institute of Technology, March 2023
“Excavating Exodus,” British Association of Nineteenth Century Americanists, May 2022
“New Black Gods in HBO’s Watchmen,” Conference on Christianity and Literature Midwest Regional Meeting, June 2021
Maternal Bonds and Mosaic Subjectivity in Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s “Moses: A Story of the Nile” Northeast Modern Language Association March 2020
“‘No religion but that which brings us liberty’: Mosaic Authority in Martin Delany’s Blake” Rhetoric and Religion in the 21st Century October 2018
“That ‘tremendous indictment of slavery’: W.E.B. Du Bois’s Reading of David Walker’s Appeal” Modern Language Association January 2018
“Race and Masculinity in Arrested Development” South Atlantic Modern Language Association November 2017
“Sacred Poetry and Aesthetic Uplift in James Weldon Johnson’s God’s Trombones” Midwest Modern Language Association, November 2016
“‘Vegetable monsters’: (Un)Natural Militancy in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Dred” South Atlantic Modern Language Association, November 2016
“‘The divine allied to beasts’: Asceticism and Animality in Walden” Association for Core Texts and Courses, April 2016
“‘An echo of the weird orgy’: Nervous Sensitivity, Sexuality, and Religious Conversion in Nella Larsen’s Quicksand” Critical Juncture, April 2016
“‘Holy Women Dancing in Hot Sweet Rain’: Patriarchal Violence, Africana Religions, and Embodied Spirituality in Toni Morrison’s Paradise” LeMoyne College Religion and Literature Forum: “Sacred Literature, Secular Religion,” October 2015
“The ‘angel is not’ing more dan de shark well goberned’: Dialect and Dialogism in Fleece’s Sermon to the Sharks in Moby-Dick” American Literature Association Symposium “God and the American Writer,” February 2015
“‘Chanting Measures’: Dialect, (In)Coherence, and Rev. Shegog’s Easter Sermon in The Sound and the Fury” Auburn University at Montgomery Liberal Arts Conference, February 2015
“I ain’t no crazy, killin’ fool’: De-mythologizing the Western in Unforgiven and Gran Torino” Baylor Symposium on Faith and Culture, Faith and Film, October 2014
“Shining Inward: The Blind Seer, Fanny Crosby, and Education for the Blind” Society for Disability Studies, June 2014
Fellowships and Awards
Special Collections Faculty Teaching Fellow, University of Georgia, 2023
Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellowship 2019-2022
Mellon Graduate Teaching Fellowship 2018-2019
James Richardson Prize, Emory English Department 2018
Graduate Student Essay Prize, Emory English Department 2018, 2019
Laney Graduate School Fellowship 2013-2018
Lilly Graduate Fellows Program 2013-2016
Programmatic Awards—Writing and Communications Program, Georgia Tech
Conference on College Composition and Communication Writing Program Certificate of Excellence 2021
University of Georgia Regents’ Teaching Excellence Award 2021
Georgia Institute of Technology Unit Diversity Champion Award 2020
Department Service
Georgia Institute of Technology
WOVENText Committee Member 2019-2021
Hiring Committee Member 2019-2021
Innovative Pedagogy Committee Member 2019-2021
Emory University
Graduate English Advisory Committee Member 2016-2017
Portfolio Scorer, First Year Writing Program Assessment 2016-2018
Emory English Department Social Chair 2014-2015
Emory English Department Recruitment Program Co-coordinator 2013-2014