Matthew Ferrari | Westfield State University (original) (raw)
Matthew is a Lecturer in the Department of Communication at The University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He earned a B.A. in Art History and Visual Culture from Bates College, an M.A. in Film and Media studies from Ohio University, and his Ph.D. fromThe University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His research focuses on film, television, advertising, and sport with a particular emphasis on representations of primitivism, wildness, play, nature, and labor. Matthew has published numerous columns in Flow (flowtv.org), Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture, and in the edited collections, Storytelling in World Cinema: Forms (2012, Ed. L. Khatib, Columbia University Press), and Fighting: Intellectualizing Combat Sports (In press, Ed. K. Gilbert, Common Ground Publishers). He has presented his work at SCMS, ICA, NCA, NEPCA, and the Flow Conference, among other venues. Matthew taught his first undergraduate course in 2003, and since then has taught many stand-alone courses (in the areas of film history and theory, media and society, video production, visual communication, and research and writing methodologies) at Tompkins-Cortland Community College, Ohio University, Westfield State University, and UMass Amherst.
Address: Matthew Ferrari, Ph.D.,
Visiting Lecturer
Department of Communication
Westfield State University
Ely Building 332F
Westfield, MA 01086
less
Uploads
Papers by Matthew Ferrari
This project broadly examines articulations of the “primitive” emerging from various sites of pop... more This project broadly examines articulations of the “primitive” emerging from various sites of popular cultural production, considering their operation within the wider “semioscape”– defined by Thurlow and Aiello (2007) as “the globalizing circulation of symbols, sign-systems, and meaning-making practices.” Taking my lead from Kurusawa (2002, 2004), Torgovnik (1991, 1998), Chow (1995), and Di Leonardo (1998), who have demonstrated the importance of the “primitive” as an interpretive discourse, I add to this body of thought by extending its scope into the realm of popular media and cultural production, examining cases within film, television, advertising, sports, and associated lifestyle commodities. I pose these general questions: How does the “primitive” contribute to the way meaning and usefulness is produced for certain commodities, and how has this changed over the last few decades? Is the “primitive” now an “empty” signifier with respect to the “non-western?” Does the greater proliferation and ease of othering via digital economies render discourses of primitive alterity less problematic? What prospects do these signs of wildness hold for masculine gender formation, shifting environmental awareness, and politics of cross-cultural consumption? Ultimately, the larger aim is to promote dialogue towards a critical re-mapping of the terms of the “primitive” as a resilient semiotic resource for commodity cultures vis-á-vis global information economies.
I argue that these signs of wildness serve, as they often have in the past, to activate values about the “human” via transgression, transformation, and transcendence; but that these signs have more recently shifted as expressive resources, now altered by digital technologies, new media ecologies, and creative “knowledge communities” resulting in a pronounced fragmentation, mutability, and wider distribution in response to greater “noise.” Thus, I argue, our informational capitalism is exponentially more prolific at contriving and disseminating various transgressions for us, engendering a schizoid state of consumer appeals via a wider romantic-naturalist discourse of limits and potentials which appeals to the terms of the “primitive.” Finally, the easiness and disposability of such hypothetical transgressions makes conditions for corporate image-makers more desperate and frenetic, propelling an increasingly unstable and unpredictable semiotic state of affairs where signs of wildness take on special currency.
Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture, 2013
This project broadly examines articulations of the “primitive” emerging from various sites of pop... more This project broadly examines articulations of the “primitive” emerging from various sites of popular cultural production, considering their operation within the wider “semioscape”– defined by Thurlow and Aiello (2007) as “the globalizing circulation of symbols, sign-systems, and meaning-making practices.” Taking my lead from Kurusawa (2002, 2004), Torgovnik (1991, 1998), Chow (1995), and Di Leonardo (1998), who have demonstrated the importance of the “primitive” as an interpretive discourse, I add to this body of thought by extending its scope into the realm of popular media and cultural production, examining cases within film, television, advertising, sports, and associated lifestyle commodities. I pose these general questions: How does the “primitive” contribute to the way meaning and usefulness is produced for certain commodities, and how has this changed over the last few decades? Is the “primitive” now an “empty” signifier with respect to the “non-western?” Does the greater proliferation and ease of othering via digital economies render discourses of primitive alterity less problematic? What prospects do these signs of wildness hold for masculine gender formation, shifting environmental awareness, and politics of cross-cultural consumption? Ultimately, the larger aim is to promote dialogue towards a critical re-mapping of the terms of the “primitive” as a resilient semiotic resource for commodity cultures vis-á-vis global information economies.
I argue that these signs of wildness serve, as they often have in the past, to activate values about the “human” via transgression, transformation, and transcendence; but that these signs have more recently shifted as expressive resources, now altered by digital technologies, new media ecologies, and creative “knowledge communities” resulting in a pronounced fragmentation, mutability, and wider distribution in response to greater “noise.” Thus, I argue, our informational capitalism is exponentially more prolific at contriving and disseminating various transgressions for us, engendering a schizoid state of consumer appeals via a wider romantic-naturalist discourse of limits and potentials which appeals to the terms of the “primitive.” Finally, the easiness and disposability of such hypothetical transgressions makes conditions for corporate image-makers more desperate and frenetic, propelling an increasingly unstable and unpredictable semiotic state of affairs where signs of wildness take on special currency.
Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture, 2013