Scholarship and Biography

Professor Tharaud teaches courses on American literature and culture from the colonial through the contemporary periods. His first book, Apocalyptic Geographies: Religion, Media, and the American Landscape (Princeton University Press, 2020) explores how 19th-century Americans used the landscape to help understand spiritual life, from the state of their souls to the fate of the globe. His next book project, "Western Salvage: Settler Colonialism, Scarcity, and Adaptation in the Modern American West," examines Western literature and art in order to think about how human cultures have adapted to conditions of scarcity (both in terms of material resources like water as well as cultural resources like information), and what lessons that history might offer us for living in an age of climate crisis.

Honors

Book, "Apocalyptic Geographies: Religion, Media, and the American Landscape (Princeton UP, 2020)", was named a Finalist for the Religion and the Arts Book Award
American Academy of Religion (United States, Atlanta) - AAR, 2021
Nebraska Cather Collaborative Research Grant
University of Nebraska–Lincoln (United States, Lincoln) - UNL , 12/2023
Norman Award, Theodore and Jane Norman Fund for Faculty Scholarship
Brandeis University (United States, Waltham), 11/2024

Organizational Affiliations

Affiliated Faculty, Interdepartmental Program in Religious Studies, Brandeis University

Associate Professor of English, Department of English, Brandeis University

Affiliated Faculty, Environmental Studies Program, Brandeis University

Affiliated Faculty, Interdepartmental Program in American Studies, Brandeis University

Education

University of Chicago
Ph.D.
University of Chicago
B.A.