Matt Tierney

Professional Bio

I teach and write about the digital and media critique that takes shape in cultural production, social movements, and knowledge work. I’ve published two books — Dismantlings: Words against Machines in the American Long Seventies and What Lies Between: Void Aesthetics and Postwar Post-Politics — and my other writing appears in diacritics, Configurations, Cultural Critique, Camera Obscura, and Postmodern Culture (for which I co-edited a special issue on “Medium and Mediation”) and as chapters in books and articles in other journals. Some considered praise of Dismantlings appears in American Literary History, boundary 2 , and The Year’s Work in English Studies; and of What Lies Between in American Literature. I've recently written on other topics ranging from 21st-century utopianism to post-movement art; and I've been interviewed on the topic of utopia and technology with Public Books and on critical cyberculture with Penn State’s Digital Culture and Media Initiative, which I now direct.

My graduate seminars have included “Mass Culture Machines,” “Cultural Critique and High-Tech Capitalism,” “Race, Gender, Medium,” “Media/Culture,” and “Reading Film.” My undergraduate teaching ranges more widely, from humanity in computerized society to technological imagination and social thought, to work and literature, community studies, film poetics, critical reading, and the politics of science fiction. I co-direct our Honors Program in English.