About

Adam Cohn is an Assistant Professor of Spanish and faculty in Jewish Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in 2021, along with a Master's degree in 2017 and a Bachelor's degree in 2015 from the same institution. His research focuses on modern Spanish cultural production, particularly within Hispanic Jewish Studies, Spanish Civil War literature, and the work of Federico García Lorca. His current book project examines how Spanish philosephardi literary culture from 1900 to 1950 increasingly problematized the nation-state and provided a platform for Jewish intellectuals to emerge into the public sphere, engaging with themes of memory, coloniality, and diaspora. Cohn also has research interests in Sephardi Studies and literary translation, contributing to the understanding of Jewish and Spanish cultural intersections.

Research topics

• Humanities
• History
• Art
• Literature
• Sociology
• Philosophy
• Political Science
• Classics
• Law
• Epistemology
• Theology
• Art history
• Cartography
• Linguistics
• Genealogy
• Geography

Selected publications

• Performing <i>convivencia</i> : female ritual and Jewish belonging in Violeta Salama’s <i>Alegría</i> (2021)

  Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies · 2025-10-02

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• Sephardi Archives and Virtual Encounters in Esther Bendahan Cohen’s Fiction

  Hispanófila/Hispanófila · 2025-06-01

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  Abstract: This article explores the confluence of archives, Spanish-Jewish encounters, and modern technology in the narrative fiction of Spanish-Moroccan writer Esther Bendahan Cohen. The analysis of Soñar con Hispania (2002, co-authored with Ester Benari), Déjalo, ya volveremos (2006), and the short story “Popey” from Una hora solamente, de la orilla del día (2016) considers how these texts simulate archives or perform an archival function in response to concerns about documenting and remembering Sephardi history. All three texts employ a dialogical model of memory in which pairs of characters engage with or imagine the Sephardi past, whether through historical research in Soñar con Hispania or the fake passport game in Déjalo, ya volveremos . Reimagining the 19th-century trope of the Spanish-Jewish encounter in a modern key, her fiction also makes use of the opportunities that the Internet provides for interactions between both groups. Framed as an online chat exchange, “Popey” offers a playful take on the Spanish-Jewish love plot that turns to the archive as a source of legitimization in an otherwise indeterminate story. Ultimately, Bendahan Cohen’s fiction reclaims and creates archives as a self-empowering act that renders Jewish experiences visible in contemporary Spain.

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• A Spectral Epistemology: A Supersessionist Reading of Galdós’s Daniel Morton

  Bulletin of Hispanic Studies · 2025-03-06

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  Benito Pérez Galdós’s Gloria (1877) has been interpreted as a passionate appeal for religious tolerance and a daring embrace of Judaism. A philo-Semitic reading of Gloria must, however, reconcile with the overtly Christian framework with which the novel attempts to humanize its Jewish protagonist, Daniel Morton. Using theories of allosemitism and spectrality, this article examines the presence of Morton as an epistemological obstacle with which the author, the characters and contemporary readers are confronted. Described ambivalently as both a spectre and a Christlike figure, Daniel carries out a messianic function in the novel, delivering a decadent family from ruin and preparing the way for a new, tolerant religious order. Nevertheless, this messianic role leads to Morton’s expendability and re-enacts the Christian supersession of Judaism.

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• Jewish imaginaries of the Spanish Civil War: in search of poetic justice

  Journal of Modern Jewish Studies · 2024

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  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
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• Replaced: Andalucía, national belonging, and Jewishness in Lorca’s <i>Los títeres de Cachiporra</i>

  Romance Quarterly · 2021

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Humanities
  • History
  • Literature

  Federico García Lorca’s fascination with the cristobicas, a traditional Andalusian puppet show, led him to write and stage a number of these plays from early on in his career. Scholars of Lorca’s guignol often note that through the revitalization of this endangered art form, the young playwright sought to bring innovation to Spain’s theater. As a result, the actual contents of these plays have received little attention, and are generally viewed as using stock characters and conventional plots. The present article argues that Los títeres de Cachiporra (1922) stages a modern version of the Spanish nation as lived in Andalucía through a farcical take on the el viejo y la niña marriage plot. Specifically, I illustrate how Rosita’s three suitors have different relationships with regnant power structures and display various degrees of rootedness to the Andalusian town where the action unfolds. Particular attention is paid to Rosita’s former lover, Currito, who returns after abandoning both her and the town five years earlier. I demonstrate that the anti-Semitic insults directed at Currito reveal a deeper anxiety over who should be included in the modern Spanish nation. Contextualizing these comments among broader trends in European anti-Semitism and Spanish philo-Sephardism in the early twentieth century, I argue that Jewishness is a productive analytic for understanding Currito’s function in the play. A superseded Jewishness, in a final analysis, becomes the counterpoint against which Spanishness is measured.

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• ‘Los esqueletos oxidados de los buques hundidos en la guerra’: Tracing the Spanish Civil War and Barcelona’s Expansion in Carmen Laforet’s <i>Nada</i>

  Bulletin of Spanish Studies · 2020 · 1 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Humanities
  • Humanities
  • Art

  The present article argues that the presence of the Spanish Civil War in Carmen Laforet’s Nada (1945) is much more pervasive than previously asserted in criticism on the novel. I maintain that when references to the war are read alongside the biographies of the characters, an allegorical interpretation of the rise and fall of modern Barcelona leading up to the main action of the novel emerges. As one of Michel de Certeau’s ‘walkers’, Andrea inscribes this politicized, alternative history of Barcelona in her perception of the city’s topography through the presence of specific place markers, such as the Eixample, Montjuïc, the Barrio Chino, and the Via Laietana. Furthermore, the representations of these landmarks, streets, and neighbourhoods, when interpreted contextually, bolster this politically-pointed reading of the novel. In a final analysis, the combination of these two approaches to Laforet’s work emphasizes how Andrea’s evolving subjectivity inherently casts doubt on the nascent regime’s rhetorical claim of control over time and place.

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Awards & honors

• JMA and Sonja van der Horst Fellow in Jewish Studies