Hannah Rachel Cole

Hannah Rachel Cole served as the 2022-2023 RITM Postdoctoral Fellow in the Environmental Humanities at Yale University. She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Cornell University and specializes in interdisciplinary research bridging literary studies with environmental and postcolonial theory.

Her educational background includes:

• Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, Cornell University

Dr. Cole's research centers on Caribbean literature, critical plant studies, and postcolonial frameworks, with particular focus on botanical afterlives of plantation slavery. Her book manuscript A Thorny Way of Thinking: Botanical Afterlives of Caribbean Plantation Slavery develops innovative methodologies for reading plant biodiversity in literary texts. She examines how flora like breadfruit function as symbols of resistance and cultural memory in post-slavery Caribbean contexts.

Her publication trends reveal strong integration of digital humanities with literary analysis, particularly through botanical migration mapping. The article "Breadfruit in the Wake" demonstrates how Derek Walcott's poetry engages with vegetal mutiny as counter-narrative to colonial botany, establishing connections between Caribbean literary production and environmental justice frameworks.

No scientific awards were mentioned in the source text.

Dr. Cole secured Cornell University Library funding for her digital humanities project Botanical Imaginaries, which creates interactive visualizations of plant movement in Caribbean literary texts. She has not listed graduate advisees in available materials but maintains active research collaborations through her public-facing digital platform.

She directs the Botanical Imaginaries project team, developing open-access digital tools that transform literary analysis through geospatial botanical mapping. This initiative establishes new methodologies for examining ecological dimensions of postcolonial literature while creating cross-disciplinary resources for scholars and public audiences.