Engaging students with a love of books and writing

As a young, recently married graduate student, the future G. Keith Funston Professor of American Literature and American Studies Jan Cohn faced unforeseen challenges in her pursuit of a doctoral degree. A young scholar in the early 1960s, Cohn says she was initially stonewalled in her attempts to enroll in a doctoral program at the university of her choice due to the perception of the time that married women were to stay at home. Since this early adversity, Cohn taught at educational institutions across the country before settling at Trinity, where she not only became the College’s first female dean of faculty, but also established herself as a passionate teacher of both English and American studies, and a prolific scholar.

Before coming to the College in 1987 as dean of the faculty, Cohn chaired the English department at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA, and taught at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. After her deanship ended in June 1994, she assumed her current role teaching in Trinity’s English department.

An “au-courant” English department

Cohn says she enjoys working at Trinity in such an “up-to-date” English department during a time in which English departments across the country strive to embrace the literary treasures of women and historically less-represented ethnic groups, while simultaneously not casting aside more traditional curricular fare.

“It’s very ‘au courant,’” Cohn says of the department. “There’s nothing old fashioned about any of the literature we’re teaching.” Cohn says she appreciates the opportunity to learn about new areas of literature from her colleagues and looks forward to the possible addition of an ethnic studies professor to the department in the future. “If you look at the curriculum of 14 years ago, you can see that it’s much more diverse now,” Cohn says. “With the rediscovery of all of these lost texts, the number of things that a teacher can pull from has increased so much.”

Cohn also credits Trinity’s English department for what she says is an outstanding publication record, particularly given its relatively small size, compared to larger universities.

“We’re pretty well established as a publishing department now,” Cohn says. “It’s really astonishing the amount of publishing that’s come out of this department.”

Cohn has by no means watched this outpouring of work from the sidelines. An accomplished writer and editor, her own publication record is formidable.

A prolific publisher

 Cohn’s first book was a study of the house and home in American fiction. She followed this with a biography of the American mystery novelist Mary Roberts Rinehart, who Cohn claims was the best selling American author ever until her death in 1958. Other publications have included a study of popular romance and a history of the Saturday Evening Post. In a subsequent “coffee table” book, Cohn’s commentary supplements the reprinting of all the historic covers of the Post. Most recently, Cohn edited a new edition of Henry James’ Portrait of a Lady, part of a new series of texts being released with commentary and supplementary materials from the period of each novel’s release to provide readers with a cultural studies context within which to frame their understanding of the novel.

Paul Lauter, A.K and G.M. Smith Professor of English, is the editor of this series, and asked Cohn to lend her expertise on James to this new release.

“Jan has always seemed to me the model teacher/scholar—informed, demanding, supportive, and fun to work with,” Lauter says. “No wonder there are always students lined up across the hall outside her office.” Lauter muses about the possibility of their teaching a course together on their respective interests—Edith Wharton and Henry James. “She’ll no doubt persuade me that James is the greatest, all the while I’m trying to get her to love Wharton as I do,” Lauter says.

While on leave this year, Cohn is working on her latest book, which she says will be a study of the orphan in American fiction. “I’m interested in how the orphan is represented against the ways in which public policy and government programs have constructed the orphan—which is always, in a way, problematic,” Cohn says. “Against whatever complex public policy positions, there’s an enormously romantic version of the orphan from at least the late 1860s to present.” Cohn cites Tom Sawyer and Little Orphan Annie as two characters she will explore, suggesting that Little Orphan Annie was used as a statement against the New Deal and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s policies. Cohn also finds a counterpart to Little Orphan Annie in Shirley Temple’s movies. “It’s a very complicated project,” Cohn says.

While Cohn has left a lasting impression at the College, as both a dean and a member of the English and American studies faculty, she insists that her motivation to teach has remained fairly simple and unchanged in her years of teaching.

“I started teaching because I love books,” she says. “Over all these decades, I still love books, but I have come to adore 19- and 20-year-old kids. I think they are the most wonderful participants in class. It’s always so much fun to work with people that age.”

Cohn hopes her love for the subject matter shows in her classes, and she encourages her students to bring a similar level of enthusiasm to class.

“My goal is always to get the people in my courses to argue, to come to terms with the material, to come to class prepared to play,” she says. “Study something that you really care about. College is the opportunity to do that.”

–Michael Bradley