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 writer of novels, plays, short stories, and poems. Writing in both English and French, his literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal, and Tragicomedy, tra ...

. 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 university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Davis, California, United States. It is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University ...

for thirty years.

Early life and education

Born in 1922 in

Columbus, Ohio Columbus (, ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of cities in Ohio, most populous city of the U.S. state of Ohio. With a 2020 United States census, 2020 census population of 905,748, it is the List of United States ...

, 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, United States. 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 ...

. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

she joined the

WAVES United States Naval Reserve (Women's Reserve), better known as the WAVES (for Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service), was the women's branch of the United States Naval Reserve during World War II. It was established on July 21, 1942, ...

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 (), known Metonymy, metonymically as the Sorbonne (), was the leading university in Paris, France, from 1150 to 1970, except for 1793–1806 during the French Revolution. Emerging around 1150 as a corporation associated wit ...

. In January 1953 while a student at the Sorbonne she attended the first public performance of ''En Attendant Godot'' (''Waiting for Godot''), by a then obscure Irish dramatist, Samuel Beckett. The play and its author became the focus of the rest of her academic life. She married microbiologist Melvin Cohn 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) is a private research university in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. Founded in 1853 by a group of civic leaders and named for George Washington, the university spans 355 acres across its Danforth ...

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 (San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a Public university, public research university in San Francisco, California, United States. It was established in 1899 as the San Francisco State Normal School and is ...

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 university, private art school in Santa Clarita, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the US created specifically for ...

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