We have just learned that a much-loved SERCIA member and former vice-president, Alain J.-J. Cohen, died on 29 January in a car accident in California.
Alain gained a BA in Philosophy from McGill University in Canada and a PhD in literature (focused on philosophy and cinema) at UCLA. He taught for almost 60 years in the literature department at the University of California-San Diego (UCSD). The three main pillars of his academic work — manifested in over a hundred research articles and 250 invited lectures and conference papers — were semiotics, cinema and psychoanalysis.
In 1995, invited by Zeenat Saleh, he attended his first SERCIA conference at Besançon and subsequently went on to organise our annual conference at the International Centre for Semiotics in Urbino, Italy, in 1999. Together with Dominique Sipière he edited the volume arising from this conference, Les autres Arts dans l’Art du cinéma (2007). At the invitation of Gilles Menegaldo, he taught for a semester in the Programme de cinéma at the University of Poitiers in 2001. In 2000 he was elected vice-president of SERCIA and served in this capacity until 2004. He also helped raise the international profile of SERCIA by inviting Sercians to give papers at the Semiotics Conference at Berkeley in 1999 and was a member of what was (unofficially) a SERCIA session at several Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) conferences in the US from 2010.
In his later years, Alain suffered a major blow when his partner, Denise (herself a distinguished film writer) was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and, two years ago, it was necessary to transfer her to community care. But he was increasingly rather than less active as time went by. He studied for and passed the required examinations to become a professional psychoanalyst and for some years also practiced this profession. He was invited by the San Diego Psychoanalytic Center (SDPC) to become its President. And, this academic year, he also taught an undergraduate course on film at UCSD that was (as always) highly popular with students.
In a moving tribute to Alain, the Chair of the SDPC Board, Timothy Rayner, commented that Alain would be remembered for “his old-world charm, his gentility, and his thoughtful, gracious presence.” Alain was a good friend to many Sercians over the years and he will be very much missed.
Raphaëlle Costa de Beauregard, Gilles Menegaldo, Zeenat Saleh, Melvyn Stokes