Mitch Therieau

Cohort
2018
Mitch Therieau

My research centers on what could be broadly called waste, or anything produced by a system that doesn't quite belong in that system. I'm particularly interested in how a whole range of modern cultural artifacts, from 'lo-fi' music and pre-distressed jeans to speculative philosophy and the realist novel, work to manufacture a sense of wastedness or accidentalness—a sense, I think, that's troublingly hard to separate from what we call authenticity. What, then, are the politics of this aesthetics? This is a crucial question for me.

I hold an MA in English from Tulane University and a BA in English and Medieval and Early Modern Studies, also from Tulane University.

Publications

"Muck, Memory, Regeneration: Abject histories in Hurston and Du Bois." Swamp Souths: Literary and cultural ecologies, eds. Anderson, Eric, Taylor Hagood, Kirstin Squint, and Anthony Wilson. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, under contract.

Contact

Research Interests

Field of Interest
Realisms, Material Culture, Psychoanalysis, Ecotheory