Michael C. Cohen

Michael C. Cohen is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, affiliated with the College of Letters and Science and the Department of English. He specializes in the literature of the transatlantic nineteenth century, particularly poetry from the 1790s to 1890s in the U.S. and the broader English-speaking world.

• Education: PhD from New York University (2007), BA from Dartmouth College (2000)

His research explores how poems were used historically, including their reception, circulation via books/broadsides/oral recitation, and the reading practices like memorization and group reading that shaped interactions with poetry. He argues that readers’ canons offer a fluid approach to early American literature and emphasize the roles of poems in the Atlantic world.

His publications focus on 19th-century American poetry, the history of reading, and transatlantic literary exchange. Notably, he authored The Social Lives of Poems in Nineteenth-Century America (2015) and is working on a new project titled Poetry and the History of Reading, which reimagines American literature from the perspective of historical readers.