Humanities and Arts
Contact Information
Office:
Salisbury Laboratories, 26
Phone: +1-508-831-5104
Fax: +1-508-831-5932
jcocola@wpi.edu
Jim Cocola
- Assistant Professor, Humanities & Arts
- Affiliated with:
Jim Cocola teaches a wide range of courses in literary studies, along with courses in American studies, creative writing, film studies, and media studies. His current research focuses on ideas of place in American poetry and poetics, on the literary and cultural production of Americans and others of Mediterranean descent, and on experiential and experimental forms of writing. In these cases, as in others, he is particularly interested in intersections of geography and the humanities, especially as they pertain to instances of literary and visual culture. In these research interests, as in his pedagogical practice, he has been drawn to innovative discourses and methods in the digital humanities, and to reflexive discourses and methods in critical theory and critical university studies.
Teaching allows Professor Cocola to be in thought with others; teaching at WPI allows him to be in thought with a unique set of creative, dynamic, and innovative students who are eager to test their sense of the world.
Research Interests
- American Literatures and Cultures
- Modern and Contemporary Poetries and Poetics
- Film, Media, Performance, and Visual Studies
- Cultural Geography and Cultural Studies
- Critical Theory and Critical University Studies
Education
- AB, Harvard University, 1998
- PhD, University of Virginia, 2009
Featured Publications
- "Putting Pablo Neruda's Alturas de Macchu Picchu In Its Places," Envisioning Landscapes, Making Worlds: Geography and the Humanities, ed. Stephen Daniels, Dydia DeLyser, J. Nicholas Entirikin, Douglas Richardson (New York: Routledge, 2011): 143-154.
- "The Old Curiosity Shop and the New Faculty Majority," College English 74.1 (September 2011): 69-84.
- "Olson as Educator," The Worcester Review 31.1-2 (2010): 58-69.
- "Renunciations of Rhyme in Byron's Don Juan," SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 49.4 (Autumn 2009): 841-862.
- "The Keeping of Ray A. Young Bear," Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture 29.2&3 (Spring and Fall 2007): 282-302.
Professional Highlights
- Scholarship, Clinton Institute for American Studies, University College Dublin, 2012
- Fellow, The MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, NH, 2012
- Research Center Scholar, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Research Center, Santa Fe, 2008-9
Courses
- EN 1251. INTRODUCTION TO LITERATURE
- EN 2233. AMERICAN LITERATURE: MODERNISM TO THE PRESENT
- EN 2237. LITERATURE AND THE ENVIRONMENT
- EN 3217. CREATIVE WRITING
- EN 3234. MODERN AMERICAN POETRY
- HU 1411. INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN STUDIES
- HU 225X. FILM STUDIES
- HU 3900. INQUIRY SEMINAR IN HUMANITIES AND ARTS
- WR 3217. CREATIVE WRITING
