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 current project focuses on conversation depiction and how viewers develop a theory of mind for characters in movies. Previous projects looked at probability signaling and techniques of viewer cognitive priming and how excess is used as a narrative resource to focus attention.
Recent/Forthcoming Conference Presentations:
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’ 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”
Roundtables/Invitations:
2024 SCMS – Media Studies Journals Publishing Information Session
Honors/Awards:
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 Submission Editor – 2023/24
Velvet Light Trap Reader Board 2020 – 2023
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
- 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