David Cooper, Associate Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, has been selected as a Conrad Humanities Scholar for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (LAS) for 2019-2024.

The Conrad Humanities Scholar designation was created to recognize those mid-career scholars with the highest potential for continued achievement in the humanities field, and to help Illinois retain these particularly talented individuals.

Cooper received a PhD in Russian and Czech Literatures from Columbia University. His research interests include Czech literature, forgery and mystification, history of translation, Russian literature, and nationalism in literature.

He is the author of Creating the Nation: Identity and Aesthetics in Early Nineteenth-century Russia and Bohemia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010). Cooper also is the editor of Traditional Slovak Folktales; Collected by Pavol Dobšinský (2001) and The Queen's Court and Green Mountain Manuscripts, With Other Forgeries of the Czech Revival (Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications, 2018).