Thomas Cook is an Associate Professor and a former kindergarten and second-grade elementary
school teacher. He also taught English for a number of years at Oshima High School in Izu
Oshima. He spent a decade living and studying in Taiwan and Japan, and recently spent a year as
a Fulbright Scholar at the An-Najah National University of Palestine in the City of Nablus. He is
interested in teaching children how to read, especially with regard to bilingual mother-
tongue/native-language education, fostering extensive pleasure reading habits in children and
adults, second language acquisition, cross-cultural child rearing practices, child and adolescent
mental health, especially with regard to shame dynamics, the role that shame plays in learning
inhibition, and how shame and rage operate on the playground, in couples therapy, and in
nationalism and war. He is a psychoanalytic research candidate at the New Center for
Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles.