Brendan Thomas is a first-year PhD student, studying the environmental, Indigenous, and settler colonial histories in the twentieth-century American West. His MA Thesis, titled "Landscape of Hope and Dispossession: Visions for the Future in the Cookson Hills, 1934–1949," examined the Ozark forests of eastern Oklahoma during the New Deal, as Native and non-Native people across the region sought to harness the federal government to remake a landscape in the midst of unprecedented ecological and economic collapse. In his doctoral work, Brendan seeks to continue exploring the relationships between state actors, local people, and their environments in the endlessly fascinating American West. In his spare time, Brendan enjoys being outside as much as possible, whether cycling, hiking, running, kayaking, or camping, and of course cheering for his much-maligned Arkansas Razorbacks.
