Ruby Cohn (born Ruby Burman; August 13, 1922 – October 18, 2011) was an American theater scholar and a leading authority on playwright

Samuel Beckett Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal and tragicomic ex ...

. She was a professor of Comparative Drama at the

University of California, Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The inst ...

for thirty years.

Early life and education

Born in 1922 in

Columbus, Ohio Columbus () is the state capital and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Ohio. With a 2020 census population of 905,748, it is the 14th-most populous city in the U.S., the second-most populous city in the Midwest, after Chicago, an ...

, Ruby Burman moved with her family to New York City, where she completed high school and graduated from

Hunter College Hunter College is a public university in New York City. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools. It also adm ...

. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

she joined the

WAVES Waves most often refers to: * Waves, oscillations accompanied by a transfer of energy that travel through space or mass. *Wind waves, surface waves that occur on the free surface of bodies of water. Waves may also refer to: Music *Waves (band ...

and served as a document courier. After the war she returned to Europe and completed a doctoral degree at the

University of Paris The University of Paris (french: link=no, Université de Paris), Metonymy, metonymically known as the Sorbonne (), was the leading university in Paris, France, active from 1150 to 1970, with the exception between 1793 and 1806 under the French Revo ...

. In January 1953 while a student at the

Sorbonne Sorbonne may refer to: * Sorbonne (building), historic building in Paris, which housed the University of Paris and is now shared among multiple universities. *the University of Paris (c. 1150 – 1970) *one of its components or linked institution, ...

she attended the first public performance of ''En Attendant Godot'' (''Waiting for Godot''), by a then obscure Irish-born dramatist, Samuel Beckett. The play and its author became the focus of the rest of her academic life. She married microbiologist

Melvin Cohn Melvin Cohn (1922 – October 23, 2018) was an American immunologist who co-founded the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. He demonstrated that immunoglobulins and white blood cells interact directly with pathogens to p ...

in 1946, moving with him to St. Louis. She earned a second doctorate from

Washington University in St. Louis Washington University in St. Louis (WashU or WUSTL) is a private research university with its main campus in St. Louis County, and Clayton, Missouri. Founded in 1853, the university is named after George Washington. Washington University i ...

with a dissertation on Beckett which became her first book. She and her husband were amicably divorced in 1961."Professor Ruby Cohn," Obituaries, San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 30, 2011, p. C6.

Career

Cohn joined the Language Arts faculty of

San Francisco State University San Francisco State University (commonly referred to as San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a public research university in San Francisco. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers 118 different b ...

in 1961 and taught until her resignation during the student strike of 1968. She joined the theater faculty of the

California Institute of the Arts The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) is a private art university in Santa Clarita, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the US created specifically for students of bo ...

in 1969, and moved to the University of California, Davis in 1972. Through her scholarship she became friends with Beckett, exchanging letters and visiting each other at least annually until his death in 1989.

Selected works

* With Samuel Beckett, ''Samuel Beckett: The Comic Gamut'' (1962; Literary Licensing, 2011) * Editor, with Bernard Dukore and Haskell Block, ''Twentieth Century Drama: England, Ireland, the United States'' (Random House, 1966) * Editor, ''Casebook on 'Waiting for Godot' '' (Grove Press, 1967) * ''Back to Beckett'', 1974 * ''Samuel Beckett: A Collection of Criticism'' (McGraw-Hill, 1975) * ''Just Play: Beckett's Theater'', 1980 * With Samuel Beckett, ''Disjecta: Miscellaneous Writings and a Dramatic Fragment'' (Grove Press, 1984) * ''New American Dramatists, 1960-1990'' (Palgrave Macmillan, 1991) * ''From Desire to Godot'' (Calder Publications, 1999) * ''A Beckett Canon'' (2001; University of Michigan Press, 2005) * ''Anglo-American Interplay in Recent Drama'' (Cambridge University Press, 2006) * ''Retreats from Realism in Recent English Drama'' (Cambridge University Press, 2009)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cohn, Ruby 1922 births 2011 deaths University of California, Davis faculty Hunter College alumni Writers from Columbus, Ohio University of Paris alumni Washington University in St. Louis alumni Samuel Beckett scholars San Francisco State University faculty California Institute of the Arts faculty United States Navy sailors WAVES personnel American expatriates in France