Elisha Cohn
· Professor Associate Chair Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program Literatures in EnglishCornell University · English
Active 2009–2025
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About
Elisha Cohn is a professor in the Department of Literatures in English at Cornell University, located in 250 Goldwin Smith Hall. Her research focuses on Victorian literature, theory of the novel, animal studies, literature and science with an emphasis on medicine, affect theory, and ecology. She has authored two books: 'Still Life: Suspended Development in the Victorian Novel' (Oxford University Press, 2016), which considers how states of reverie and trance shaped aesthetic forms in Victorian literature, and 'Milieu: a Creaturely Theory of the Contemporary Novel' (Stanford University Press, 2025), which rethinks the status of animals in global fiction by exploring how contemporary narratives evoke the creatureliness of both animal and human lives. Additionally, she is a co-editor of the 'Oxford Handbook of George Eliot' (2025). Her scholarly contributions include essays published in journals such as Contemporary Literature, Victorian Studies, and the Journal of Victorian Culture. Her current academic interests extend to the history of medicine, affect theory, and ecology.
Research topics
- Sociology
- Art
- Literature
- Aesthetics
- Geodesy
- Geography
- Geometry
- Psychoanalysis
- Philosophy
- History
Selected publications
The Science of Character: Human Objecthood and the Ends of Victorian Realism
Modern Language Quarterly · 2023 · 34 citations
1st authorCorrespondingOne of Olive Schreiner’s favorite verbs, it turns out, was internet. S. Pearl Brilmyer’s fascinating new book, The Science of Character, embeds Victorian realist fiction in a range of then-active philosophical and scientific debates that led away from a concept of character as an interiorized subjectivity. Realist character, for Brilmyer, was an emergent phenomenon, the product of networks of geometrical, electrochemical, evolutionary, and cultural forces. Linked to Marxist traditions in novel c…
Ohio State University Press eBooks · 2018-06-05 · 22 citations
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingVictorian Literature and Culture · 2018-01-01 · 2 citations
articleOpen access1st authorCorrespondingAn abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the 'Save PDF' action button.
Dickens's Talking Dogs: Allegories of Animal Voice in the Victorian Novel
Victorian Literature and Culture · 2019-01-01 · 1 citations
article1st authorCorrespondingHow does the category of the “animal” contribute to the Victorian novel? In the 1840s and 1850s, magazines offered endless short tales of “animal sagacity” that most commonly featured dogs, demonstrating the virtues of the species. An 1858 article in Household Words, “Old Dog Tray,” observes, “Alas! not a day will pass but we can descry human qualities in the brute, and brute qualities in the human being; and, alas again, how often we find a balance of love, fidelity, truth, generosity, on the s…
Animal Studies and the Contemporary Novel
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature · 2018-03-28 · 1 citations
reference-entry1st authorCorrespondingAbstract Animals have prowled literature from its beginnings in the ancient world through medieval bestiaries and out from the margins of the novel in the modern era. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, animals’ literary presence has generated increasing critical interest. Animal studies, a relatively new interdisciplinary field, calls attention to the accelerating exploitation of animals in the period of industrial modernity and questions what it is possible to know about animals’ own ex…
Frequent coauthors
- 81 shared
Alison Byerly
Queen's University
- 81 shared
Tina Young Choi
- 81 shared
Ellen Crowell
- 81 shared
Alison L. Booth
University of Virginia
- 81 shared
Jesse Cordes
University of Strathclyde
- 81 shared
Duc Dau
- 81 shared
Kirstie Blair
University of Strathclyde
- 81 shared
James Rudy
University of Tulsa
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