Center Faculty
Thomas R. Cole, PhD, Director
Thomas R. Cole is the Beth and Toby Grossman Professor and Director of the McGovern Center for Health, Humanities, and the Human Spirit at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston.
He is also a Professor of Humanities in the Department of
Religious Studies at Rice University.
Cole graduated from Yale University (B.A. Philosophy, 1971), Wesleyan University (M.A., History, 1975) and the University of Rochester, (Ph.D., History, 1981).
Dr. Cole has published many articles and several books on the history of aging and humanistic gerontology. His book The Journey of Life: A Cultural History of Aging in America (Cambridge University Press, 1992) was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
He is senior editor of What Does It Mean to Grow Old? (Duke, 1986), the Handbook of Humanities and Aging (Springer, 1992, 2nd edition, 1999) and Voices and Visions: Toward a Critical Gerontology (Springer, 1993). The New Yorker noted his co-edited Oxford Book of Aging as one of the most memorable books of 1995. His most recent co-edited book is Practicing the Medical Humanities (2003).
Cole's interest in the life stories of older people has taken him into biography and film-making. In 1984, he encountered a hospitalized psychiatric patient who claimed he was the "original Texas integration leader." While psychiatrists focused on the diagnosis, Cole embarked on a decade-long journey to recover the patient's story.
The result was a book-No Color Is My Kind: the Life of Eldrewey Stearns and the Desegregation of Houston (1997) - and an accompanying film, "The Strange Demise of Jim Crow", broadcast nationally on over 60 PBS stations and internationally by the State Department. The documentary received numerous awards and was nominated for a regional Emmy and a National Humanities Medal.
Cole's most recent film, Still Life: The Humanity of Anatomy, was an official selection at the Doubletake Documentary Film festival in April 2002. This work explores the special yet unstated relationship between medical students in the anatomy lab and the people who donate their bodies for dissection. In 2001, Cole's writing workshop program for elders was featured in the PBS documentary Life Stories, on which he served as Senior Editorial Consultant. Both these films probe relationships between the present and the past, the living and the dead as crucibles of moral and spiritual development.
Cole's work has been featured in the New York Times, National Public Radio, Voice of America, PBS, and at the United Nations. He is a frequent contributor to professional and public discussions about our aging society. He serves as an advisor to the United Nations NGO Committee on Ageing, the Union for Reform Judaism's Department of Family Concerns, and various editorial and foundation boards. He is currently serving as a writer and consultant for the President's Council on Bioethics.
See his most recent research and publications.
Contact information: thomas.cole@uth.tmc.edu
