Contact Information

Biography

Matthew Ussia has been teaching literature, composition, and speech at various institutions since 2005 and at Duquesne since 2013. His first book of poetry The Red Glass Cat, was published by Alien Buddha Press in 2021. Fred Shaw in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette describes The Red Glass Cat as beating with "a thumping big heart." His writings have appeared in Mister Rogers and Philosophy, Winedrunk Sidewalk, Future Humans in Fiction and Film, North of Oxford, Anti-Heroin Chic, and The Open Mic of the Air Podcast among others. He is co-editor of The Dreamers Anthology: Writing Inspired by the Lives of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Anne Frank and Recasting Masculinity. He has presented at NeMLA, NCTE, CTE, ACLA, and the CCCC Mid-Atlantic Summer Conference, among others. Dr. Ussia's areas of specialty include literary theory, pedagogy, North American Literature of the 20th and 21st Centuries, and contemporary global literature. His classes tend to focus upon the intersection between the academy and broader global trends. His scholarship focuses on how globalization, consumerism, and other factors of modernity influence the construction of individual, local, and national identity.

Matthew Ussia is also a humorless music geek and collector of vinyl. He plays postdoom metal on a theremin and sang back up on the postpunk band Silence's album The Countdown has Begun. He once hit a home run at a department softball game and refuses to let anyone forget that it happened.

Education

Ph.D., English Lit. and Criticism, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, 2012
M.A., English Lit. and Criticism, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, 2003
B.A., English Literature, Saint Francis University, 1999

School

BRDG 101 Writing & Analysis

BRDG 102 Writing & Literature

HONR 101 Honors Writing & Analysis

IHP 105 The Shock of Modernity

ENGL 101 Multi-Genre Creative Writing

ENGL 205 Teaching in Film

ENGL 212 American Underground Literature and Popular Culture

ENGL 228C 21st Century Graphic Novels and Visual Narrative

ENGL 330W Fiction Workshop I

ENGL 331W Poetry Workshop I

ENGL 434W - Literary Theory

Matthew Ussia article entitled "Mister Rogers's Lesson for Democracy" appears in Mister Rogers and Philosophy. "The Folly of Fallen Futures: Reading and Teaching Edward Bellamy's Looking Backwards after 'The End of History'" was published in Future Humans in Fiction and Film. He is completing a monograph about capitalist realism's impact on our most intimate understandings of ourselves entitled The Privatized Person. His first collection of poetry, The Red Glass Cat, was published in 2021. His writings have appeared in Trailer Park Quarterly, North of Oxford, Winedrunk Sidewalk, Voices from the Writer's Place, and The Open Mic of the Air Podcast among others. He is co-editor of The Dreamers Anthology: Writing Inspired by the Lives of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Anne Frank and Recasting Masculinity. Recent academic presentations include:

"Work Aesthetics: Small Town Associations to the Authentic and the New American Pastoral" NeMLA, 2022
"Care, Community Engagement, and Disciplinary Decision Making," NeMLA, 2022
"'To be Haunted by the Specter of Exclusion': Teaching Identity in the 21st Century" 2021 Northeast Modern Language Association.
"Whiteness as the Locus of Authenticity" 2021 Northeast Modern Language Association
"The Shattered Eschatology of the Online Era Novel and the Personhood of the New Panopticon" 2021 American Comparative Literature Association Conference
"Critical Reflective Practice, Inquiry, and the Hidden Curriculum Within" NCTE 2019
"Teaching with Crass: Suggestions for a Pedagogy of Anarchy" Conference for College Teaching and Learning November 2019
"There's a Dissimilation on the Edge of Town: Bruce Springsteen, White Working-Class Mythology, and the Patina of Truth." 2019 Mid-Atlantic Popular and American Culture Association Conference
"There's a Dissimilation on the Edge of Town: Bruce Springsteen, Mythology, and the Patina of Truth." 2019 Northeast Modern Language Association
"'Structural Silences' of the Classroom Space - Examining the Hidden Curriculum" Mount Aloysius Conference on College Teaching. 2018.
"On "Zero-Drag" Students and the Specter of "Book Club" The Mid-Atlantic Conference on College Composition and Communication. 2018
"The Infinite Terror of Open Spaces" Center for Qualitative and Interpretive Research, Duquesne University, http://www.duq.edu/academics/schools/liberal-arts/centers/interpretive-and-qualitative-research/archive/2017-2018/10-26-2017-matthew-ussia
"Benevolent Deceptions: Shocking True Stories from Metacognition's Bait and Switch." The Mid-Atlantic Conference on College Composition and Communication. 2017.
"Safe Spaces, Punk Spaces, and the Public Sphere." 2017 Northeast Modern Language Association
"Of Voyeurism and Exhibitionism: Nakedness, Security, Vulnerability, Intimacy, and the Privatized Person." 2016 Northeast Modern Language Association
"Tarantino's Counterfactual Histories as Weapons against Historical Simplification." 2015 Northeast Modern Language Association
"QR Codes in the Syllabus: A Five Part Manifesto" 2015 Northeast Modern Language Association
"Viewer as Voyeur and Victim: Cautionary Tales of Surveillance from the Former East Germany." 2014 College English Association
"Countering the Voices of Neoliberalism Within: Constructing the Limits of the Myth of the Empowered Individual." 2013 Countering Contingency: Teaching, Scholarship, and Creativity in the Age of the Adjunct
"Letters for the Living Lonely: Teaching Composition in an Age of Violence and Isolation." NCTE 2010 Reading the Past, Writing the Future
"Children of Reagan: Troubling Pleasures for the Era of Privatization" NEERO 2010
"Indifference and the Death of the Enlightenment as Sellable, Teachable Moments in the College Literature Classroom." NCTE 2009 Once and Future Classics: Reading Between the Lines
"From Brothels and Weed to Firebirds and Ice Cream: Pleasure as the Blinding/Designing Force behind Critiques of American Materialism" CEA/PCEA 2009 Design