An interview by Harvey Undergraduate Fellow Anna Deen.
Noah Cohan is a Lecturer and University College M.A. Program Coordinator in American Culture Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, where he received his PhD in English and American Literature in 2015. His research is focused on the cultures of American sports: their impact on athletes, fans, and non-consumers, especially with regard to matters of race and gender. He teaches the American Culture Studies junior-level methods seminar (375A) and leads the workshop for seniors working on independent “Capstone” research projects.
Cohan is the co-founder of “Sports and Society: Culture, Power, and Identity,” an AMCS Program Initiative focused on the intersections of athletics, identity, and social power, and featuring conversations between faculty and students from WashU and other regional institutions, as well as interested community members. He previously organized "Jason Collins in the American Sportscape: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Sexuality,” a 2014 symposium devoted to considering the significance of Collins, America’s first openly-gay male professional athlete in one of the four major sports. Cohan is co-editor of Sport in the University, a special issue of the journal American Studies (Fall 2016), and the founding coordinator of the Sports Studies Caucus of the American Studies Association. His book, “We Average Unbeautiful Watchers”: Fan Narratives and the Reading of American Sports, is forthcoming in 2019 from the University of Nebraska Press.
Recorded on February 28, 2018.
