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 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 at work in 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. 

Research Interests

My wider research interests include: periodical/newspaper writing of the 18th and 19th centuries; book history; material culture; Victorian utopias writing; history of the novel.