Rebekah Cohen, Newnham

Biographical Information

I previously studied at the University of Oxford, where I read for my BA in English Language and Literature at Somerville College, followed by an MSt in English (1830-1914) at Merton College. I then spent a year working as Graduate Trainee Librarian at Christ's College in Cambridge, where I enjoyed working with and researching the library's Special Collections. 

Now, I am excited to be studying for my PhD at Newnham College, funded by a Cambridge Trust Vice-Chancellor's and Newnham College Scholarship. My PhD research analyses early to mid-nineteenth century periodicals and newspapers as print technologies for organising knowledge of novelty and the new. My research asks how formal and composition strategies for assembling periodical texts - within individual contributions, across the publications, and as material objects - fashioned the periodical as a compilation that creates novelty. My enquiry concentrates on how these concerns related to a particular genre of periodical writing: the miscellaneous prose sketch. My project features a wide array of periodical writers from the Romantic and Victorian periods, including Charles Lamb, Charles Dickens, journalism by George Augustus Sala, and contributions to newspapers by the likes of George Eliot and Anthony Trollope. I am a 2026 recipient of a Pforzheimer Jr Award from the Keats-Shelley Association of America. 

At Cambridge, I have taught Practical Criticism and Critical Practice for Part IA and Part II, Paper 10 (1847-72), and I have supervised several dissertations for Part II and Paper 7a (1830-1945) on topics relating to nineteenth-century literature. I welcome enquiries for supervision in any of these areas, as well as teaching for Paper 6 (1660-1870). 

Research Interests

My wider research interests include: periodical/newspaper writing of the 18th and 19th centuries; book history; material culture; visual art and illustration; Victorian utopias writing. Authors I am especially interested in include Leigh Hunt and Charles Dickens. 

 

 

Selected Publications

'Character Sketches and "Middles" in the Pall Mall Gazette', The Review of English Studies, 77.330 (2026), pp. 336-55.