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IF THE TRUE MEASURE OF A MAN IS THE COMPANY HE KEEPS . . . THEN I'M DEEPLY concerned that Jeffrey Jerome Cohen may be in trouble and we'd perhaps all best keep our distance.
Allow me to explain: I have known Jeffrey since we met at the "Reading Monsters, Reading Culture" conference at the University of Cincinnati in 1994, at which he presented the keynote address, a version of what was to become "Monster Culture (Seven Theses)," his introduction to his 1996 Monster Theory: Reading Culture collection. This keynote address was given two years after completing his PhD at Harvard and just before joining the faculty at George Washington University where he ended up directing my dissertation. Not being a medievalist myself, however, I thought it possibly enlightening for the purpose of preparing these remarks to consult with a handful of medievalists concerning Jeffrey's impact on that particular field. I sent out a few email inquiries and immediately received two responses. The first wrote, "I'd be delighted to provide an encomium on Jeffrey's behalf; I would likely begin with something like, 'Prof. Cohen is a bastard of the first order-a malignant narcissist, plagiarizer of others' writing, and not one novel idea in his head'" (Eileen Joy). The second, adopting a somewhat different tone, wrote, "JJC overwhelmed medieval art history like a mighty mountain torrent, at once fertilizing and destructive; irresistible in impression, carrying everything away with him, he became a liberator to few, a destroyer to many. Oh, sorry. No, that was Heinrich Wölfflin writing about Michelangelo in 1928. But, well, more or less the same" (Asa Mittman).
And these were the colleagues to whom Jeffrey referred me!
Lest anyone arrive at the wrong conclusion, I hasten to add that these comments were entirely tongue-in-cheek and each author went on to testify to Jeffrey's decisive impact on the field of medieval and cultural studies in the most laudatory terms possible, but the shared sarcasm was perhaps even more telling and suggests to me both esteem for Jeffrey's accomplishments, bordering on awe and ever-so-slightly tinged with envy, as well as an irreverent playfulness invited by Jeffrey's own good nature and dry wit.
In terms of accomplishments, Jeffrey's work has indeed had a decisive impact on...