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Richard M. Cook

richard cook

Founders Professor
446 Lucas Hall
314-516-5516
rcook@umsl.edu

PhD, University of Michigan  
BA, Franklin and Marshall College

Richard M. Cook teaches courses in American literature, literary criticism, biography, and autobiography.  He is the author of  Alfred Kazin: A Biography (2008) and The Journals of Alfred Kazin (2011), both published by Yale University Press.  Other publications include a book on Carson McCullers and articles on Herman Melville, William Faulkner, Edmund Wilson, Lionel Trilling, and American literary criticism. He has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright teaching fellowship to West Germany, and a National Endowment of the Humanities research fellowship. Alfred Kazin: A Biography was selected by Choice magazine as an “Outstanding Academic Title from 2008” and selected as “Best Book of 2008" by the Washington Post.  Cook is currently working on a study (possibly a biography) of the critic Lionel Trilling.