Nicholas Coles
Director of Composition
Associate Professor of English
412-624-6631
coles@pitt.edu
CL 617-L
Nicholas Coles holds BA and MA degrees from Oxford University and MA and PhD degrees from SUNY at Buffalo. He regularly teaches courses in Pitt’s Department of Instruction and Learning, as well as the English Department. He is also Field Director of the National Writing Project, based at the University of California at Berkeley. Until 2002, he directed the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project, a site of the National Writing Project, working to improve students’ writing and academic performance in K-12 schools.
Research and Publications: He teaches and writes about literacy and pedagogy, working-class literature, contemporary poetry, and teacher-research. His articles have appeared in College English and many other journals and edited collections. He is the co-editor, with Peter Oresick, of two collections of poetry about work: Working Classics: Poems on Industrial Life (1990) and For a Living: The Poetry of Work (1995), both from the University of Illinois Press.
He is currently working on an anthology of American Working-Class Literature, to be published by Oxford University Press, co-edited with Janet Zandy of Rochester Institute of Technology.
Honors and Awards: His work with the Writing Project was recognized in 1998 with a Chancellor’s Distinguished Public Service Award.
Teaching
Graduate Courses
- Seminars
Undergraduate Courses
- Literature
- Writing
Other Duties & Service
- Member, Graduate Admissions Committee
- Member, Composition Committee
