Dr. Cowe earned her PhD in American Studies from the University of Glasgow. Her doctoral thesis focused on the influence of Zen Buddhist philosophy on the life and work of Henry Miller. A monograph derived from this research, entitled Killing the Buddha: Henry Miller’s Long Journey to Satori, was published in September 2020 (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press).

WRDS 150 Research Area: The Politics of Nostalgia

Research interests:

• Nostalgia/Memory Studies
• 20th Century American Literature/History
• Henry Miller
• Post left/green anarchism

In 2020 she published her first monograph: Killing the Buddha: Henry Miller’s Long Journey to Satori. New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.

She has published articles and reviews in: The European Journal of American Studies, Cercles: Revue Pluridisciplinaire du Monde Anglophone, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Journal of American Studies, Journal of the Institute of Historical Research, and Nexus: The International Henry Miller Journal.

Forthcoming publications include: Cowe, J. (2022) “Chapter 40: Orwell and Miller.” The Oxford Handbook of George Orwell. Ed. N. Waddell. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Recent Conference Papers include:

“Rootless Nostalgia, Yekke Identity and Intergenerational Memory Curation/Creation in Mor Kaplansky’s Café Nagler”. A Jewish Europe? Virtual and Real-Life Spaces in the 21st Century. Centre for European Research, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, 2022.

“We are now in the mountains and they are in us’: Solastalgia, Manifest Destiny and the Contemporary Ideological Battle for America’s Environmental Legacy”. A Superpower by Nature: The Environment in American Studies. Netherlands American Studies Association, University College Utrecht, Netherlands, 2022 (online).

“Populism and Nostalgia: Competing Images of an Aspirational America and Trumpism”. CAAS- Tracing Populism in the U.S. and Comparative Perspectives, University of Zadar, Zadar, Croatia, 2021 (online).

“You Ruined Regular Porn for Me: The East Van Porn Collective and Negotiating Masculinities in Pornography”. Millennial Masculinities: Queer, Pimp Daddies and Lumbersexuals, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand, 2019.

“The Coming Storm: Middle-Class Violence and The Prediction of Theresa May’s Jams in J.G.’s Ballard’s Millennium People.” Utopian Studies Conference. The University of California, Berkeley, America, 2018.

This course will aim to explore how different academic disciplines engage with the concept of nostalgia. Nostalgia is a word, or more usually a feeling, that most people have used or felt; however, very few understand its constant presence in everyday life. We will study nostalgia from its earliest appearance in academia as a form of mental illness in the seventeenth century and follow its growing influence over, and manipulation of, contemporary ideas of national identity, consumerism, class, social media and the environment. We will attempt to understand how the politics of memory, belonging and collective remembrance reflect and inform current political discourse.