Dr. Thomas Salem Manganaro

In his research, Thomas Salem Manganaro focuses especially on eighteenth-century and Romantic-era British literature with particular focus on the relations between literature & philosophy, literature & science, intellectual history, and aesthetic theory. He also maintains intellectual and personal interests in the Arab world and its relations to the European Enlightenment as well as to contemporary American culture. He teaches courses on the history of the novel, eighteenth-century literature, Romantic-era literature, literature and empire, Arab-American literature, literature and the environment, and literature and philosophy.

Manganaro’s book, Against Better Judgment: Irrational Action and Literary Invention in the Long Eighteenth Century, was published with the University of Virginia Press in 2022 and was awarded the Walker Cowen Prize for outstanding work of scholarship in eighteenth-century studies. Against Better Judgment focuses on people in literature who freely and knowingly know what they should not do — a condition known as “akrasia” or “weakness of will” in philosophy. While such conditions posed problems for Enlightenment philosophy, they also present authors with opportunities for literary innovation. The book traces how English novelists, essayists, and poets of the period sought to represent “akrasia” in ways philosophy cannot, leading them to develop techniques and ideas distinctive to literary writing, including new uses of irony, interpretation, and contradiction. Manganaro is also currently working on a new project on worldbuilding in the early realist novel.

He has essays published in The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, Studies in Romanticism, and Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture.