Thomas Bryant

Professional Bio

Thomas Bryant is a graduate worker in the English and Visual Studies programs. His research looks at the ways that animals were called upon in realist literary and visual movements in order to oppose cultural industrialization. He specializes in ninteenth-century American literature, Critical Animal Studies, and ecocritism. His work is informed by secondary interests in the Frankfurt School, Queer theory, and the history of animal film.

His article "Playing Chicken: Queer Ecology and Anti-Industrialism from Hawthorne to Wister," examines Nathaniel Hawthorne, Upton Sinclair, Owen Wister's use of chickens to envison forms of interspecies sociality that resist the industrialization of animal life. In doing so, he conceptualizes a materialist foundation for queer ecology. His work has been supported by the Mark Twain Circle and the Center for Mark Twain studies.

Thomas has taught English 15: Introduction to Writing and Rhetoric and English 105: American Culture and Folklife. His approach to teaching writing centers skill building in sentence writing and deployment of evidence to build student confidence in expression. Inspired by Mark Twain, his class culminates in a satirical argument assignment in order to help students learn to play with rhetorical strategies and find pleasurable forms of political engagement. English 105: American Culture and Folklife introduces students to foundational methods of visual and literary analysis and explores the ways that celebrities mediate our conceptions of sociality.

Thomas is also a director and playwright. His plays have been performed at the University of Kentucky, Knox College, Lake Creek High School in Montgomery, Texas, and St. Olaf College.