Robert Cohen

I loved the reading list for this course, but I felt it lacked any strong female voice, persepctive, or characters for much of the class (except for Mansfield and Woolf). That's totally compounded by Professor Cohen's masculine and strong perspective on each text. He is a great lecturer, but does not make a lot of room for students, I found it hard to participate in class. One book a week, just so y'all know!

I loved the reading list for this course, but I felt it lacked any strong female voice, persepctive, or characters for much of the class (except for Mansfield and Woolf). That's totally compounded by Professor Cohen's masculine and strong perspective on each text. He is a great lecturer, but does not make a lot of room for students, …Read more

I really liked the way that this class was organized. Every week, three people wrote stories that we would then read and discuss as a class. I thought it was super fun to read other peoples' writing and see how each person expressed themselves. It was especially cool to see what different people had in common through different aspects of their writing. It was always pretty intimidating for me to share my pieces, but I felt that getting other peoples' opinions both made me feels better about what I'd written and gave me lots of ways in which to improve it. This class definitely gave me inspiration to write more. Professor Cohen assigned interesting short stories to us every week and the annotations let us think about what stylistic things we wanted to implement into our own writings. His feedback about our writing was particularly helpful and I'd definitely take another class with him.

I really liked the way that this class was organized. Every week, three people wrote stories that we would then read and discuss as a class. I thought it was super fun to read other peoples' writing and see how each person expressed themselves. It was especially cool to see what different people had in common through different aspect …Read more

This is a very beginner-friendly English course that still pushes you. For those craving small seminar-style English classes, this is not the class for you! My least favorite part of this class was how large it was--we couldn't really go in-depth and interpret the stories together. Prof. Cohen is a great lecturer, but it got a bit boring, especially when you consider that the people who did participate were simply offering their takes--that's it. No collective close reading other than cliche or on-the-surface observations. But again, this only really matters if you are really into English Lit. and taking discussion-based classes. Beyond the readings and lectures, we had three papers: one 4-5 pager, one 9-12 page comparative piece, and a 4-5 page paper that was lower stakes. Prof. Cohen does not provide many guidlines (no prompts), so I would definitely recommend going into office hours for the papers. He seemed pretty generous in his feedback. Also, you can do without purchasing the anthology he requires. As long as you have a physical copy of the stories for class, that's all that matters. Overall, this a fine course. I put more effort into it than I feel like I should've received back, but I would reflect nicely on the experience. I recommend it for anyone who is interested in the English major or to seniors who want an easy class to finish with.

This is a very beginner-friendly English course that still pushes you. For those craving small seminar-style English classes, this is not the class for you! My least favorite part of this class was how large it was--we couldn't really go in-depth and interpret the stories together. Prof. Cohen is a great lecturer, but it got a bit bo …Read more