Jeffrey Cohen is the Dean of Humanities in The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Foundation Professor of English.
His research examines strange and beautiful phenomena that challenge the imagination, at once alien and intimate, feared and desired. He is widely published in the fields of medieval studies, monster theory, ecocriticism and environmental humanities. Published in 1996 and never out of print, his edited collection Monster Theory: Reading Culture helped establish the field of monster studies. Stone: An Ecology of the Inhuman received the 2017 René Wellek Prize for best book in comparative literature from the American Comparative Literature Association. With planetary scientist Lindy Elkins-Tanton he co-wrote the book Earth, an interdisciplinary examination of planetary thinking. With Julian Yates, he wrote Noah's Arkive (2023), a book about imagining conservation and humane refuge during climate change. With Stephanie Foote, he co-edited The Cambridge Companion to Environmental Humanities.
An overview of his success as dean of humanities may be found here.