DEPAOLO, Charles 1950-

PERSONAL:

Born June 13, 1950, in New York, NY; son of Patrick and Josephine (Lentino) DePaolo; children: Victoria, Patrick. Ethnicity: "Italian-American." Education: Hunter College of the City University of New York, B.A., 1973, M.A., 1976; New York University, Ph.D., 1982. Politics: "Common decency." Religion: Roman Catholic.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of English, Borough of Manhattan Community College of the City University of New York, 199 Chambers St., New York, NY 10007. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Borough of Manhattan Community College of the City University of New York, professor of English, 1984—. New York University, adjunct professor, 1988; Bernard M. Baruch College of the City University of New York, visiting associate professor, 1989; DePauw University, member of science-fiction studies group. Science Fiction Foundation, member.

MEMBER:

Friends of Coleridge, H. G. Wells Society, Wordsworth-Coleridge Association.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Grant from National Endowment for the Humanities, 1991; travel grant for Italy, American Council of Learned Societies, 1994.

WRITINGS:

Coleridge's Philosophy of Social Reform, Peter Lang Publishing (New York, NY), 1987.

Human Prehistory in Fiction, McFarland and Co. (Jefferson, NC), 2003.

Contributor to Coleridge: Historian of Ideas, edited by Samuel L. Macey, University of Victoria (Victoria, British Columbia, Canada), 1992; also contributor to reference books. Contributor of articles and reviews to periodicals, including Wordsworth Circle, Wellsian: Journal of the H. G. Wells Society, Nineteenth-Century Contexts, Foundation: International Review of Science Fiction, Romanticism Past and Present, Charles Lamb Bulletin, Science-Fiction Studies, and CLIO: Journal of Literature, History, and the Philosophy of History.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

The Literature of Infectious Disease; research on intellectual history, genre taxonomy, and how the experience of epidemic disease is expressed in historical, scientific, and creative writings.

SIDELIGHTS:

Charles DePaolo told CA: "I am interested in studying the relationship between fiction (drama and sometimes verse) and the scientific milieu in which it was written. I consider the degree to which the fiction reflects contemporary theory in a given discipline, for example, paleo-anthropology or epidemiology. I also consider whether an author misconstrued, embellished, or faithfully recorded scientific theory, and whether the creative work contributes to our understanding of science. Is literature properly thought of as a useful or entertaining reflection of scientific theory? Or does it provide a thought-provoking context within which real scientific progress begins? My belief is that the fiction can enhance the scientific corpus."