Research Interests
Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century British Literature; Animal Studies; Gender Studies; Literature and Science; Environmental Humanities
My research over the past ten years has been shaped by several new interdisciplinary fields: Animal Studies, Science Studies, Food Studies, and Environmental Humanities. My book Imperfect Creatures: Vermin, Literature, and the Sciences of Life, 1600-1750 explores how seventeenth- and eighteenth-century art and literature register and address environmental pressures during The Little Ice Age, when widespread food insecurity marked rodents, birds, and other small creatures as material and symbolic threats to fragile food supplies. More recent and forthcoming work attends to zoonotic disease and ecological pressures in several historical and geographic contexts.
Education
- B.A. English, Auburn University, 1981
- M.A. English, Louisiana State University, 1987
- Ph.D. English, Louisiana State University. Distinction, 1990
Additional Campus Affiliations
Affiliate Professor, Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment
Highlighted Publications
Cole, L. (2016). Imperfect Creatures: Vermin, Literature, and the Sciences of Life, 1600-1740. University of Michigan Press. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.4424519
Recent Publications
Cole, L. (2023). Defoe and Ecology. In N. Seager, & A. Downie (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Daniel Defoe (Oxford Handbooks). Oxford University Press.
Cole, L. (2022). Before The Thing: Viruses, Sled Dogs, Seabirds, and Science Fiction. In S. Bezan, & R. McKay (Eds.), Animal Remains (Perspectives on the Non-Human in Literature and Culture). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003129806-15
Cole, L. (2021). Aliens, Plagues, One Health, and the Medical Posthumanities. Configurations, 29(4), 453-467. https://doi.org/10.1353/CON.2021.0032
Cole, L. (2021). Plagues, Poisons, and Dead Rats: A Multispecies History. In S. McHugh, R. McKay, & J. Miller (Eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Animals and Literature (pp. 589-603). (Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39773-9_41
Cole, L. (2021). What Is an Animal? Contagion and Being Human in a Multispecies World. Lumen: Selected Proceedings from the Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies/ Travaux choisis de la Societe Canadienne d’etude du dix-huitieme siècle, 40, 35-53.