معرفی
Jerome Tharaud is an Associate Professor of English at Brandeis University, where he also serves as Director of Graduate Studies. He holds a PhD from the University of Chicago and specializes in American literature and culture, with particular expertise in early American literature, religious history, visual culture, and the American West.
Tharaud's research interests span a diverse range of topics including print culture and media, theories of space and place, environmental literature, and apocalyptic narratives in American literature. His work demonstrates a consistent focus on how Americans have used landscape and geography to understand spiritual life and cultural identity.
His acclaimed 2020 book Apocalyptic Geographies: Religion, Media, and the American Landscape (Princeton University Press), which was a finalist for the Religion and the Arts Book Award from the American Academy of Religion, explores how 19th-century Americans employed landscape to comprehend spiritual matters. His current book project, 'Western Salvage: Settler Colonialism, Scarcity, and Adaptation in the Modern American West,' examines Western literature and art to consider how human cultures have adapted to conditions of scarcity and what lessons this history might offer for living in an age of climate crisis.
Tharaud's scholarly contributions include numerous articles in prestigious journals such as ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, Western American Literature, American Art, and ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance. His writing demonstrates a consistent engagement with how American literature and culture intersect with religious thought, environmental concerns, and spatial understanding.
- Finalist, Religion and the Arts Book Award, American Academy of Religion (2021)
- Nebraska Cather Collaborative Research Grant (University of Nebraska-Lincoln, December 2023)
- Norman Award, Theodore and Jane Norman Fund for Faculty Scholarship (Brandeis University, November 2024)
Tharaud is an affiliated faculty member with Brandeis University's Environmental Studies Program, Interdepartmental Program in Religious Studies, and Interdepartmental Program in American Studies. His teaching portfolio includes courses on environmental literature, the American West, American literary geographies, religion and literature, and courses examining apocalypse in literature. His approach to teaching and scholarship reflects his background as a former newspaper reporter in Montana, where he covered city government, schools, and Native American communities, bringing practical journalistic experience to his academic work.
