As a UVic English professor, she published Temptations of Faust (University of Toronto Press, 2002), her theoretical analysis of the conceptual paradigms that allowed German fascism to emerge in a highly civilized nation. Cobley postulates that Herbert Mann's Dr. Faustus provides a more astute understanding of German fascism than that for which the work is usually given credit. Her other books are Representing War: Form and Ideology in First World War Narratives (1993), Postmodern Archaeologies of Modernity (2002) and Modernism and the Culture of Efficiency (UTP, 2009). She received the Raymond-Klibansky Book Prize for the best work in the Humanities written in English and subsidized by the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, 1993-94. She had a SSHRC Post-Doctoral Fellowship for 1983-84 and a SSHRC Research Fellowship for 1995-98.

[BCBW 2009] "War"