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Laura Nicosia

Interim Director, Interdisciplinary School for Social Transformation, College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Office:: Dickson Hall 464
Email:: nicosiala@montclair.edu
Phone:: 973-655-7326
Degrees:: BA, Saint Peter's College; MA, Montclair State University; PhD, New York University
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Profile

I am currently serving as Interim Director of the newly launched Interdisciplinary School for Social Transformation at Montclair State University. Prior to this role, I have been a tenured Full Professor of English, with expertise in American literature, young adult and children’s literature, popular culture, and literary theory. I also serve as the New Jersey State Ambassador for the Assembly on Literature of Adolescents (ALAN) and am a two-term Past President of the New Jersey Council of Teachers of English (NJCTE).

My most recent publications, co-edited with Dr. James F. Nicosia, include Critical Insights: Virginia Woolf; Critical Insights: Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus; Critical Insights: Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses (Salem/Grey House Press, 2023); The Encyclopedia of African American Writing (Grey House Press, 2023); and Digital Literacy: Skills & Strategies (Gale, 2022), which received a starred review in Library Journal. Other recent works include Notable Writers of the American West & the Native American Experience (2021), Critical Insights: Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (2021), and the two-volume Notable American Women Writers (2021), which was named a CHOICE Top 75 Community College Resource. With Dr. Myers, I also co-edited Examining Images of Urban Life: A Resource for Teachers of Young Adult Literature (Myers Education Press, 2020).

In recent years, I have published peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on authors including Beatrix Potter, Cynthia Voigt, A. A. Milne, Gloria Naylor, Sarah Orne Jewett, Suzanne Collins, Neil Gaiman, Louis Sachar, Paolo Bacigalupi, Philip Roth, and Marianne Moore.

Several of the collections I have co-edited with Dr. Nicosia have earned recognition from CHOICE, including the 2023 Outstanding Academic Title award for Notable Writers of the American West & the Native American Experience. Our work is widely available in university libraries across the country, including Montclair State’s Sprague Library.

At the heart of my teaching is a commitment to bringing diverse voices into the classroom. My courses foreground authors and characters whose work engages issues of mental health, trauma, memory, class, and access. Above all, I aim to help students (re)discover the community-building and curiosity-sparking power of reading in all its forms.

Selected titles for some of my books and collections:
Critical Insights: Frankenstein
Critical Insights: All the Pretty Horses
Digital Literacy: Skills & Strategies
Critical Insights: Virginia Woolf
Notable Writers of the American West & the Native American Experience
Critical Insights: Catch-22
Notable American Women Writers
Examining Images of Urban Life
Critical Insights: The Pearl
Through the Distorted Lens: Media as Curricula and Pedagogy
Educators Online: Preparing Today’s Teachers for Tomorrow’s Digital Literacies

Specialization

My areas of scholarly interest rest in Modern/Contemporary American fiction and poetry, young adult and children's literatures, diverse voices, science fiction, speculative fiction, and educational applications for social networking media. Some of my more recent publications examine the narrative constructs of Neil Gaiman, Louis Sachar, Philip Roth, John Dufresne, Willa Cather, and Gloria Naylor.

With my expertise in Modern and Contemporary American literature, I also serve as Volume Advisor/Curator for Gale Publishing's Short Story Criticism, Children's Literary Review, and Contemporary Literary Review. I have curated entries on numerous authors such as: A. A. Milne, Beatrix Potter, Frank Baum, Gloria Naylor, John Green, Laurie Halse Anderson, Louis Sachar, Suzanne Collins, Roald Dahl, Theodore Geisel, Roald Dahl, and Walter Dean Myers, among others.

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Office Hours

Fall

Monday: 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm; Appointments are generally held via Zoom but may be face-to-face. Appointments made in advance via email: nicosiala@montclair.edu
Wednesday: 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm; Graduate Advising hours, generally. Made via email. Face-to-face or Zoom
Thursday: 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm; Appointments are generally held via Zoom but may be face-to-face. Appointments made in advance via email: nicosiala@montclair.edu

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