Sean Cocco is an Assistant Professor of History.  Growing up in Italy left him with a lifelong curiosity about the past.  He now teaches and researches Italian and European history between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.  His present work explores ideas of nature in the pre-modern period, combining environmental, cultural, and history of science approaches with a consideration of politics and religion.  He is now writing about volcanoes as objects of science, religious understanding, humanist interest, and travelers’ curiosity between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. 

Cocco believes that there must be a rich exchange between scholarship and teaching.  His courses thus strive to translate his interests and expertise into knowledge meaningful for students.  He strives every day to bring history alive in all its complexity, difference, and importance.  He hopes that his students will share his passion.  Cocco earned his Ph.D. from the University of Washington, and was a Fulbright Fellow in 2001.