Spotlight: Adam Cohn
Profile written by Alana Goldman, ’24, the Center’s Lori and Eric Sklut Undergraduate Intern for 2023-24.
Adam Cohn is an assistant professor in the department of romance studies and the JMA and Sonja van der Horst Fellow in Jewish Studies. He specializes in modern Spanish literature, with a focus on race, diaspora, and Judaism in early 20th-century Spain. He holds a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia, and joined Carolina in fall 2023.
What draws you to study Jewish culture within Spanish literature?
What really excites me about studying Jewish culture in modern Spain is that it’s a relatively open field. Scholars in the U.S. have only started to be interested in this topic in the past 20 or so years. In the early 20th century, Spain had a miniscule Jewish population, but Jewish topics were everywhere, specifically within novels. This entered the political sphere as a way of talking about the modernization of the country. As a researcher, I’m attracted to this period because there’s so much work to be done.
What can you tell me about your current research project?
My current project looks at the philosephardic novel published in Spain or by Spaniards between 1905 and 1950. “Philosephardic” refers to a positive evaluation of the Sephardic experience, primarily due to the Sephardim’s history in Iberia. Sephardi individuals were admired and romanticized by Spaniards, which then meant that more typical antisemitic stereotypes were placed onto other Jewish groups. The novels that I’m looking at contain Sephardic characters or discuss Sephardic topics, and they are written by both Jewish and non-Jewish authors. I’m examining how the use of the Sephardi experience, and of Sephardi Jewry in the novel, is a way of speaking about Spanish colonialism, and the unstable place of Jewish individuals in early 20th–century Europe.
What do you hope students take away from your classes in regards to Judaism and Spanish literature?
I’m interested in my students being able to read a text or engage with cultural production, such as a film or visual art, and then being able to give an informed interpretation of this. These interpretations can be based on their personal reaction to the text, or a series of historically or aesthetically informed lenses. I want my students to understand how and why Jewish and Sephardi topics are imagined in the Spanish context.
What is your favorite Spanish novel?
My favorite Spanish novel is Nada, by Carmen Laforet, published in 1944. The novel details the experiences of a young woman who goes to Barcelona in late 1930s Spain to study literature. It describes the experiences of Spaniards in Barcelona after Franco’s victory in the Spanish Civil War, and the repressive environment of Franco’s Spain. It’s a richly ambiguous novel, and I’ve found that students love diving into its complexities and interpreting it in different ways.