Mattie Jacobs is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. He works within the intersecting fields of cognitive studies, rhetorical narrative theory, and film. His dissertaiton project focuses on conversation depiction and how viewers develop a theory of mind for characters in movies from the late silent period to the 1970s Previous projects looked at probability signaling and techniques of viewer cognitive priming and how excess is used as a narrative resource to focus attention. In 2024, he won the inaugural Stephen Prince Memorial Prize.
Publications:
“Night Sweats – Embodiment and Film Noir” Projections 18(2), 20-36, 2024.
“The Invisible Contributors – Narrative Film Production, Studio Epitexts, and Test Audiences” The Materiality of Narrative Dynamics, ed. by Stefan Iversen, Evan Van Tassell, Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, Jun 2, 2025.
Recent/Forthcoming Conference Presentations:
2025 – The Hollywood Conference, “Talking at the Movies: Dynamism, Performance, and Theory of Mind in the Sound Transition Period”
2025 – SCSMI, “Theory of (Robot) Mind – Audiences and AI Authorship in Media Production”
2025 – MaMI, ‘“Bye Bye Bye” to Your “Greatest Day”: Sean Baker’s Pop Music Promises in Red Rocket and Anora’
2025 – SCMS, “Organizing the Indies: Ted Hope, the Independent Film Community, and the MPAA’s “Piracy” Screener Ban”
2024 – SCSMI, “Night Sweats – The Somatic Cinema, Sweaty Embodiment, and Film Noir”
2024 – MaMI, “‘A smooth man on the ivories, hot on the trigger and cool in a jam’ – John Cassavetes’ Johnny Staccato and Jazz Noir”
2024 – ISSN, “Can We Read a Robot Writer’s Mind? Collaborative Authorship, the WGA strikes, and AI in the Writers’ Room”
2023 – SCSMI, “Talking at the Movies: Conversation Depiction, My Dinner with Andre, and Differentiating Dialogue”
2023 – SCMS, “Finished and Shelved: Studio Finances, Completion Bonds, and The Dynamics of What’s on the Chopping Block”
2023 – ISSN, “The Incomprehensible American: Disunity and Motivated Excess in Wim Wenders’ The American Friend”
2023 – Narrative and Materiality, “Everything is Serial Now: Changing Film Narratives During Production and Audience Co-Creation”
2022 – ISSN, “You Laugh or You Groan: Charting the Coincidental and Improbable in Narrative Cinema”
2022 – SCMS, “Second Avenue Histrionics,” Melodrama and the Yiddish Shund Film in the Popular Presses of the 1930s”
2022 – SCMS Videographic and Digital Humanities Seminar participant, video work created/presented: “Friendly American Excess: The American Friend and Cinematic Excess”
2021 – SCMS, “A Free Ganga Zumba to a Utopian Quilombo: Carlos Diegues’ Tropicalist Reimagining of the History and Legend of Ganga Zumba”
Roundtables/Invitations:
2024 SCMS – Media Studies Journals Publishing Information Session
Honors/Awards:
Stephen Prince Memorial Essay Prize – Inaugural Winner, SCSMI 2024
Communication Arts Exceptional Service Award – 2024
Student Research Grant, Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Funding – 2023
Helen K. Herman Memorial Fund Scholarship (Acknowledging graduate students who demonstrate academic ability, need, and participation in extra-curricular activities), 2023
Alan Nadel Prize for Graduate Student Presentation, Narrative 2022, Honorable Mention
Charles Chester Pearce Award in Rhetoric, Dept of Comm Arts, 2022, for research and presentation
Service:
Velvet Light Trap Managing Editor – Issue 98, 2025
Velvet Light Trap Submission Editor – 2023/24
Velvet Light Trap Reader Board 2020 – 2023, 24-25
Education:
- M.A. Film Division, Communication Arts, University of Wisconsin – Madison, 2022
- B.A. The Film Studies Program, The Ohio State University, 2020
Courses:
- COM100/181 – Introduction to Public Speaking, Honors, 2020, 2021 – Instructor
- COM313 – Crime Films – Instructor (named a Top 10 UW Summer Course, 2024)
- COM355 – Introduction to Media Production, Spring, Fall 2022 – TA, Summer 2023 – Instructor
- COM350 – Introduction to Film, Spring 2023 – TA
- COM467 – Advanced Cinematography, Fall 2023 – TA
- COMM 609/659 – Advanced Motion Picture Workshop – TA