The Department of Political Science

 

Prof. Mitchell Cohen specializes in 19th and 20th century political theory and contemporary European and Middle Eastern politics, and teaches courses on political thought, comparative government, and politics and literature.

Prof. Cohen has been National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, a visiting professor at Stanford, and has guest lectured at numerous French universities. He is co-editor of Dissent, one of the country’s most prestigious political journals, and travelled to Eastern Europe to cover the collapse of communism for its pages. He is a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities.

Prof. Cohen is the author of The Wager of Lucien Goldmann (1994), a study of a prominent French political thinker, and Zion and State (1987; French translation, 1990), which won Baruch College's Presidential Scholarship Achievement Award. He has also edited Princeton Readings in Political Thought (1995) and Rebels and Reactionaries: An Anthology of Great Political Stories (1992). In addition to American scholarly journals, he has written for The New York Times Book Review, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, The Times Literary Supplement (London), Musik und Asthetik, Les Temps Modernes (Paris), Reset (Rome), MicroMega (Rome), Aesthetik and Kommunikation (Berlin), Etcetera (Mexico City), Nexus (the Netherlands), and Davar (Tel Aviv). He is "American Correspondant" of Raisons Politiques (Paris Institute of Politics) and is a member of the editorial board of Jewish Social Studies.

Prof. Cohen, a native New Yorker, lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Courses

Contemporary Political Ideologies (Pol. 3337)
Modern Political Thought (Pol 3336)
Early Political Thought (Pol. 3335)
Topics in Politics and Literature (Pol. 3201)

Selected Publications

"To the Dresden Barricades: The Genesis of Richard Wagner's Political Ideas," in T. S. Grey, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Wagner (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 47-63.

“Socialist Zionism” (published in Hebrew), in Yimiyahu Yovel and Menachem Brinker, eds., New Jewish Time: The Encyclopedia of Jewish Culture in the Secular Age, Vol. 2 (Tel Aviv: Keter, 2007).

"France: Red Rose, Blue Grip," Dissent, Fall 2007, pp. 19-26.

“'A Roasted Cat will never make a Hare-pie': Thoughts on Political Opera,” Published in German: “Aus einer gebratener Katze wird doch kein Hasenpastete”: Überlegungen zum politschen oper,” Musik und Asthetik, July 2006, pp. 51-66; in French as “Réflexions sur l’opéra politique,” Raisons Politiques, May 2004, pp. 41-58.   

"In the Murk of It: Iraq Reconsidered," in Thomas Cushman, ed., A Matter of Principle (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005), pp. 76-92. 

"A Thought Experiment for the Left," Dissent, Summer 2004, Vol. 51 Issue 3, pp. 52-60.

"Auto-Emancipation and Antisemitism," Jewish Social Studies, Fall 2003, Vol. 10 Issue 1, pp. 69-77.

"An Empire of Cant," Dissent, Summer 2002, Vol. 49 Issue 3, pp. 17.

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