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Thomas R. Cole
John P. McGovern, M.D. Center for Health, Humanities, and the Human Spirit
6431 Fannin Street, JJL 300
Houston, Texas 77030,
713.500.5970
thomas.cole@uth.tmc.edu
Thomas R. Cole is the Beth and Toby Grossman Professor and director of the John P. McGovern, M.D. 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. He writes and consults widely on aging and humanistic gerontology. His documentary film and accompanying book on the desegregation of Houston were nominated for a National Humanities Medal, and his book The Journey of Life: A Cultural History of Aging in America (1992) was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
Presentations
Ethical and Spiritual Issues in End-of-Life Care
This session will discuss ethical and spiritual issues too often ignored in health care at the end of life: aid-in-dying, deciding for others, the definition of death, forgoing life-sustaining treatment, and finding meaning in life's ending. Discussion will include a case presentation and audience personal reactions.
The Strange Demise of Jim Crow: The Desegregation of Houston and the Life of Civil Rights Leader Eldrewey Stearns
In 1984, Thomas R. Cole discovered Eldrewey Stearns in a Galveston psychiatric hospital. Working with Stearns over the next thirteen years, Cole reconstructed his life and with it the untold story of Houston's peaceful desegregation. This session will consist either of a screening and discussion of Cole's resulting film, The Strange Demise of Jim Crow: How Houston Desegregated Its Public Accommodations, 1959–1963 (1997); or readings, slides, and discussion of the accompanying book, No Color is My Kind: The Life of Eldrewey Stearns and the Desegregation of Houston (1997).