Writing: Poetry, Fiction, NonFiction An introduction to the writing of poetry, short fiction, and nonfiction through analysis of writings by modern and contemporary poets and prose writers and regular discussion of student writing. Different instructors may choose to emphasize one literary form or another in a given semester. Workshops will focus on composition and revision, with particular attention to the basics of form and craft. This course is a prerequisite to CRWR 0380, CRWR 0385, CRWR 0370, and CRWR 0375. (This course is not a college writing course.)

Pulling Reality’s Hair: Truth and Other Fictions We will, in this seminar, occupy ourselves with works that straddle or blur or occasionally just flat out ignore the aesthetic divide between fiction and non-fiction, in the hopes of getting a better grip on the relation between self and other, word and world, narrative strategy and fidelity to truths both large and small.  Hence readings will include biographical and autobiographical novels, novelistic treatments of biography and autobiography, and a number of hybrid composites that cannot be classified, though we will surely try.  Readings will include Nabokov, Proust, Henry Adams, J.M. Coetzee, W.G. Sebald, Lydia Davis, Joan Didion, Gregoire Bouillier, Art Spiegelman, and Spalding Gray. In addition we will view films by Ross McElwee, Andre Gregory, and Charlie Kaufman. This course is not open to students who have taken ENAM 0307.  (

Kafka and his Influence This course is an intensive inquiry into the work and reach of Franz Kafka.  In addition to reading his novels, his stories, his letters and diaries, and his aphorisms, we will take up some of the voluminous and often highly imaginative writings on Kafka, with an eye towards fashioning some ideas, and some writings, of our own. (This course is a junior/senior seminar for ENGL majors; others by instructor approval).

Advanced Fiction Workshop Study and practice in techniques of fiction writing through workshops and readings in short fiction and novels. Class discussions will be based on student manuscripts and published model works. Emphasis will be placed on composition and revision. (Approval required; please email a writing sample to cohen@middlebury.edu) (Formerly ENAM 0370) (Any 100-level CRWR course) (This course is not a college writing course) 3 hrs. sem

Contemporary Literature In this course we will explore seminal works of the post-World War II literature written in English. In the course of our readings we will move through the cultural and social transformations beginning with the paranoia and alienation of the Cold War, and continuing with the Civil Rights era, the national crisis of Vietnam, the rise of multiculturalism and the culture wars in the 1980s, the wide ranging effects of the information revolution, the profits and perils of globalization, and the profound anxiety of the war on terror. Writers studied will include Thomas Pynchon, Vladimir Nabokov, Don DeLillo, Donald Barthelme, William S. Burroughs, Toni Morrison, Ishmael Reed, Ana Castillo, and Art Spiegelman.

Writing Place: Sinking Deeper into Landscape Can place be rendered so richly it becomes a character unto itself? In this course, we'll explore the ways writers deepen a reader's sense of place, and showcase the ways setting can pressurize a narrative and a life. This course will be useful to prose writers of all types, as we explore both non-fiction and fiction - like work by Vladimir Nabokov, Jamaica Kincad, Sarah M. Broom, Daphne du Maurier, and Pitchaya Sudbandthad - in order to observe technique, intention, and impact. Students will read critically and also produce place-based work of their own. This course will be of particular interest to environmentally engaged students looking to process loss and degradation of place in their work.

The Beast in the Jungle In this course we will explore some literary texts in which the practice of exploration itself yields a complex confrontation with, and often breakdown of, identity and will.  Westerners’ longing to separate themselves from home and make contact with a foreign “other” arises from the high purposes that set imperial adventures in motion in the first place. Readings will include Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Forster’s Passage to India, Waugh’s Handful of Dust, Bowles’ Sheltering Sky, Stone’s/ Dog Soldiers/, Duras’ The Lover, Greene’s A Burnt-Out Case.

The Short Story (AL) This course approaches the short story as a distinct prose genre, beginning with work by Edgar Allen Poe and Guy de Maupassant and concluding with stories by contemporary authors. We will examine the particularly notable growth of the genre in America and survey various trends in the form, from "local color" sketches and realistic tales to experiments in modernism and postmodernism. Throughout, we will consider issues of structure, characterization, style, and voice. Other authors may include Anderson, Barthelme, Cheever, Chekhov, Hemingway, Joyce, Moore, O'Connor, Twain, and Welty.

The Modern Moment This course will explore the development of the modernist novel – and modernism in general-- in the first half of the 20th century. We will examine issues of formal experimentation, new conceptions of character, and an ever-dawning consciousness of the catastrophic as seen in personal, cultural, and political venues.  Readings will include Conrad, Joyce, Forster, Kafka, Woolf, Lawrence, Mansfield, Waugh, and others.

Robert Cohen

Reviews and ratings for Robert Cohen at Middlebury College.Robert Cohen teaches Writing: Poetry, Fiction, NonF, Truth and Other Fictions, Kafka and his Influence and more.  Explore top rated instructors and find the best for you.Is Robert Cohen good ? Find out on MiddCourses.

Professor Cohen is a great teacher, he obviously is very passionate about the work he does and is aware of students differing capabilities when it comes to writing. He made the class very approachable and is very relaxed. 

Rob Cohen is fantastic, not only as a lecturer but also as a mentor in life. I would most certainly take his class again! After this class, I decided to choose him as my major advisor. His reading of texts is textured, intuitive, highly resonant, and not reliant on theoretical frameworks. Most discussions in class are so inseparably embedded in lived experience, which perfectly illuminates how life and art are one. This class is the epitome of an inspiring English seminar which makes you grow in all dimensions.  

Wonderful seminar that isn’t back breaking, but gets you the credit and gives you access to the wonderful world of Rob Cohen and his lectures. I wish people spoke more in this class and the reading list was as exciting as his previous courses, but nonetheless a fruitful course. 