Meet Professor Emmanuel Cohen
Professor Emmanuel Cohen teaches six courses a year throughout each of the programs in Parsons, from First Year classes, through to History of Design and Curatorial Studies, French, he even helps out within the Advanced Research Seminar for Fashion Design Juniors. On top of all of this, Professor Cohen is co-coordinating the First Year Curriculum.
His interest in each of these six courses is unwavering. Professor Cohen exclaims his interest in teaching a range of classes, stating each course allows him to look into different topics and teaching approaches that complement the course at hand. Being exposed to the arts from a young age through attending museums, theatres, cinemas and music events in Paris, Professor Cohen found interest in performance arts, and even teaches a class based on this, titled Bodies in Space. Prior to this, the exposure motivated Professor Cohen to study a specific period in Performance Art, the historical avant-garde at the beginning of the 20th century (Dada, Surrealism + the American Parisian scene). His interest for this single moment in time stemmed from the fact that it allowed him to keep his interdisciplinary approach and curiosity, as all the boundaries between the arts were said to collapse and merge into life. It sounded to him like the best decision to remain indecisive about what he would study. Hence, his dissertation highlighted art history, theatre and performance studies, linguistics applied to English, French and even makeup languages, jazz and (futurist) noise music, proving Professor Cohen as an avid and successful researcher.
His efforts in researching are supported by articles in which Professor Cohen wrote, and a series of them are expected by the end of the year in collective books on Theater and Performance:
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- “Observation rĂ©ciproque et observation rĂ©ciproque au théâtre,” Observer le théâtre. Pour une nouvelle Ă©pistĂ©mologie du théâtre, (dir.) P. Katuszewski et M. Manca, Bordeaux, Presses universitaires de Bordeaux Montaigne, 2019.
- “Le Théâtre ‘activitĂ© de l’esprit’ : texte, langage et graphie dans les théâtres dadaĂŻste et surrĂ©aliste”, Formes et dispositions du texte théâtral, du symbolisme Ă aujourd’hui (dir. Pascal LĂ©croart), Besançon, Annales LittĂ©raires de Franche-ComtĂ©, 2019.
- “In store(d) behaviors: Tsuneko Taniuchi’s poetics of costumed performance”, Fashion, Performance and Performativity (dir.) Marco Pecorari and Andrea Kollnitz, Londres,  I. B. Tauris, 2019.
Aside from publications with regard to performance artist Tsuneko Taniuchi, Professor Cohen also works heavily alongside her, closing a three year partnership earlier this year. Professor Cohen invited Tsuneko Taniuchi to Parsons to teach a workshop with our Bodies in Space students, exploring her methods and style. Coverage of this workshop can be found here. (link the earlier article) Prior to this academic year, Tsuneko Taniuchi held a two workshops and performances in 2018 – Table-ronde autour du “Micro-ÉvĂ©nement n°6 bis : Fast-Food de Tsuneko Taniuchi”, MusĂ©e national d’Art et d’Histoire de Saint-Denis, Saint-Denis, and Table-ronde autour du “Micro-ÉvĂ©nement n°50 de Tsuneko Taniuchi”, Le GĂ©nĂ©rateur, Gentilly.
He has also worked with the French director Rebecca Zlotowski for the movie Planetarium, with a theater company the Birgit Ensemble founded by Jade Herbulot and Julie Bertin, whose creations were shown in the official program of the Festival d’Avignon, the largest theatre festival in the world, and at the ComĂ©die-Française, the French National Theatre in Paris.