Fields: Film Studies; Media Studies; Critical Theory; 20th-and-21st-century Art, Literature, and Culture; History of Capitalism
Biography:
Matthew Ellis is a Senior Instructor of Literature and Film in the English department at Portland State, where he has taught since 2023. He completed his Ph.D. in Modern Culture and Media at Brown University in 2021, with a graduate certificate in Science and Technology Studies. Originally from the Portland area, Matt completed his undergraduate work in the Portland State English and Film departments, where he was also the coordinator of 5th Avenue Cinema.
At Portland State, he teaches classes on film theory, film and media history, and late twentieth/early-twenty-first century American popular culture. Among others, his course offerings include:
- Critical Theory of Cinema
- History of Cinema and Narrative Media (I, II)
- The Conspiracy Theory
- Futures of Nostalgia
- Post-Cinema
- Apocalypse Cinema
- Digital Cultures
He is currently at work on a book project tentatively titled Downturn Aesthetics: American Culture After Accumulation, which periodizes twenty-first century American cultural production alongside the political-economic work of Giovanni Arrighi, Robert Brenner, and David Harvey.
Other interests include: film and media aesthetics and history, television and the digital transition, philosophy of history, Marxian approaches to history and political economy, "media archaeology," Hollywood history, Neoliberalism and political theory.
Publications: