Dr. Cowe earned her PhD in American Studies from the University of Glasgow. Her doctoral thesis focused on the influence of Zen Buddhist philosophy on the life and work of Henry Miller. A monograph derived from this research, entitled Killing the Buddha: Henry Miller’s Long Journey to Satori, was published in September 2020 (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press).

WRDS 150 Research Area: The Politics of Nostalgia

Research interests:

• Nostalgia/Memory Studies
• 20th Century American Literature/History
• Henry Miller
• Post left/green anarchism

Books

Cowe, J. (2020) Killing the Buddha: Henry Miller’s Long Journey to Satori. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, New Jersey.

 Journal Articles

Cowe, J. (2022) ‘Past Perfect(ed): Future Nostalgia and the Fight Against Trump’s America in Netflix’s Hollywood’. European Journal of American Studies, 17, 2.

Cowe, J. (2016) ‘Sex and the City: A Situationist Reading of Jens Jorgen Thorsen’s Film Adaptation of Henry Miller’s Quiet Days in Clichy’. European Journal of American Studies, 11, 2.

Cowe, J. (2016) ‘What Are You Going to Do About Max? Understanding Anti-Semitism in Max’. Nexus: The International Henry Miller Journal, 11, pp. 15-25.

Book Chapters

Cowe, J. (2025) Orwell and Henry Miller. In N. Waddell (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of George Orwell. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Cowe, J. (2024) “Destruam et ædificabo”: Personal and historical suffering within the nostalgic redemptive narrative in John Banville’s The Untouchable. Suffering in Anglophone Literatures. Ed, C. Armstrong & M. Domines Veliki. Lanham: Lexington Press.

Reviews

Cowe, J. (2020). The Aesthetics of Nostalgia TV: Production Design and the Boomer Era, by Alex Bevan. Reviewed in Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 40, 4.

Cowe, J. (2016). Henry Miller: New Perspectives, James M. Decker, Indrek Manniste, eds. Reviewed in European Journal of American Studies, 10.

Cowe, J. (2015). Henry Miller, by David Stephen Calonne. Reviewed in Cercles: Revue Pluridisciplinaire du Monde Anglophone, 34.

Cowe, J. (2014). Henry Miller: The Inhuman Artist, by Indrek Manniste. Reviewed in Journal of American Studies, 48.

Cowe, J. (2014) The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism, Stephen A. Smith, ed. Reviewed in Reviews in History: Journal of the Institute of Historical Research, 1664.

Cowe, J. (2014) whiteonwhite (exhibition), by Eve Sussmann/Rufus Corporation. Reviewed in HARTS & Minds: The Journal of Humanities and Arts, 1, 3.

Cowe, J. (2013) Renegade: Henry Miller and the Making of Tropic of Cancer, by Frederick Turner. Reviewed in Journal of American Studies, 47, 3.

Recent Conference Papers/Invited Workshops

“Ruling Over the Ashes:” Cascadian Bioregionalism, Manifesto Overlap and the Ideological Battle for Nature”. manifesto NOW! Purposes and Effects of an Escalating Form in the US and Beyond, Technische Universität Dresden, Germany. July, 2024.

“Overreach: Trudeau, the Freedom Convoy, Restorative Nostalgia and the Rhetorical Spectre of Populism.”. Politicised Nostalgias, University of Northampton, England. July, 2024

Using Corpus & Discourse Methods to Study Nostalgia Workshop, University of Bologna, Italy. May, 2023.

“We are now in the mountains and they are in us’: Solastalgia, Manifest Destiny and the Contemporary Ideological Battle for America’s Environmental Legacy”. NASA- A Superpower by Nature: The Environment in American Studies, University College Utrecht, Utrecht, the Netherlands. May, 2022. (Online)

“Rootless Nostalgia, Yekke Identity and Intergenerational Memory Curation/Creation in Mor Kaplansky’s Café Nagler”. A Jewish Europe: Virtual and Real-Life Spaces in the 21st Century, Centre for European Research, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. May, 2022.

“Populism and Nostalgia: Competing Images of an Aspirational America and Trumpism”. CAAS- Tracing Populism in the U.S. and Comparative Perspectives, University of Zadar, Zadar, Croatia. Sept, 2021. (Online)

“You Ruined Regular Porn for Me”: The East Van Porn Collective and Negotiating Masculinities in Pornography”. Millennial Masculinities: Queers, Pimp Daddies and Lumbersexuals, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand. Dec, 2019.

“The Coming Storm: Middle-Class Violence and the Prediction of Theresa May’s ‘Jams’ in J.G. Ballard’s Millennium People”. Utopian Studies Conference, University of California, Berkeley, America. Nov, 2018.

“The Prodigal Son’s Battle Cry: Dystopian Visions of America in Henry Miller’s The Air- Conditioned Nightmare”. CAAS Uncertain Futures, OCAD University, Toronto, Canada. Oct, 2017.

“Sex and the City: A Situationist Reading of Jens Jorgen Thorsen’s Film Adaptation of Quiet Days in Clichy”. BAAS Annual Conference, University of Birmingham, England. Apr, 2014.

Professional Associations

The International Media and Nostalgia Network (IMNN)

British Association of American Studies (BAAS)

European Association of American Studies (EAAS)

The Society for Utopian Studies

This course will aim to explore how different academic disciplines engage with the concept of nostalgia. Nostalgia is a word, or more usually a feeling, that most people have used or felt; however, very few understand its constant presence in everyday life. We will study nostalgia from its earliest appearance in academia as a form of mental illness in the seventeenth century and follow its growing influence over, and manipulation of, contemporary ideas of national identity, consumerism, class, social media and the environment. We will attempt to understand how the politics of memory, belonging and collective remembrance reflect and inform current political discourse.