Matthew Moore

Associate Professor of Humanities; Director, Traditional Undergraduate General Education

Matthew Moore Headshot

What has always drawn me to Roberts is how we normalize a caring, humanizing community that is eternally focused on the relationship between the inner life and what is greater than ourselves.

Matthew Moore

Profile

For Dr. Matthew Moore, Roberts Wesleyan University isn’t just a workplace - it’s part of his story. His parents met and fell in love here, just as he did years later. That deep-rooted connection to Roberts is personal, but what continues to inspire him is the University's commitment to intellectual freedom and exploration. As a humanities major, he experienced firsthand the value of being able to take courses that sparked his curiosity, engage with students from all walks of life, and discover new pathways he hadn’t imagined.

In a time of growing cultural division, Dr. Moore is drawn to how Roberts fosters a caring, humanizing community. He sees the University as a haven where students, faculty, and staff come together to wrestle with big questions, connect the inner life to something greater, and seek ways to heal a hurting world. Through its wide range of exploration programs and interdisciplinary learning, he believes Roberts equips students not only with knowledge, but with purpose, empathy, and the courage to lead.

SPECIALTY AREAS:

World cultures, film history, global history, geography, art and aesthetics, literature, playwriting, drama, comedy, political cartoons

CURRENT RESEARCH INTERESTS:

Nonviolence and world religions, films of Peter Weir, Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Carol Reed, contemporary plays, popular historiography, comedy

Excellent! Respectful of students. Doesn't talk down. Opens up new things to think and feel. Made me want to read more and write poetry again.

Student Review on RateMyProfessors

He's an amazing teacher. He makes interesting connections between everything. The readings matter. He treats you like you're important. I looked forward to class every day and it wasn't even my major. One of my all-time favorite profs.

Student Review on RateMyProfessors

Courses Taught

  • African History
  • Asian History
  • Latin American History,
  • Cultural Geography
  • Introduction to Literature
  • Shakespeare
  • Humanities
  • Senior Seminar
  • Global Film
  • The Art of Film

Education

  • Ph.D. | SUNY Binghamton University
  • M.A. (Literature) | SUNY Brockport
  • M.A. (History) | SUNY Brockport
  • B.A. | Roberts Wesleyan College

Sample Publications

  •  “Orson Welles’s The Stranger and the Horology of Nazism” presenter and panelist: “Responding to Threats in Film” Midwest Popular/ American Culture Association Annual Conference, Chicago, Illinois (October 2023)

  • “Clocks and Order in Shadow of a Doubt” presenter, panelist: “Film, Television, Music, and Visual Media: Alfred Hitchcock” Southwest Popular/ American Culture Association Annual Conference Albuquerque, New Mexico (February 2023)

  • Darkness is Our Candle (original play, staged reading produced by Ad Hoc Players 2023)

  • Watching Cosmic Time: Suspense Films of Hitchcock, Welles, and Reed. Cascade Books/ Wipf and Stock P. Eugene, OR, 2022 (A full-length academic book of film history and cultural analysis) https://wipfandstock.com/9781666732627/watching-cosmic-time/

  •  “The Truman Show and Apocalyptic Time” presenter, panelist: “Film and History: Philosophy, Ethics, and Religion” Northeast Popular/ American Culture Association Annual Conference (October 2022)

  • Flora (original play, 48 Hour Play Plate-Off Marathon reading for Nickel Flour Productions 2022, reading for Rochester Regional Playwrights 2023)

  • Grant Writing from the Ground Up by Damon Diehl. SPIE Press: Bellingham, WA, 2021. (Illustrator, 50 original illustrations) https://spie.org/Publications/Book/2614041?&origin_id=x646&SSO=1

  • William Shakespeare’s Sharknado (original play, produced at Rochester International Fringe Festival 2021)

  • “Darwin’s Bible” in High Shelf: A Home for Poetry, Photography, and Art. High Shelf Press, Issue XXII (September, 2020)

  • “Cosmos” in Prometheus Dreaming. Vol. 2, Issue 6 (August, 2020)

  • Zoom Your Own Adventure: A Quarantine Comedy (original play, produced at Rochester International Fringe Festival 2020)

  • “Trumpism and the New Civil War” “Trump: TV Hero or Villain?” presenter, panelist: “Politics and Civic Life: The Trump Era and Social Change” Northeast Popular Culture Association Annual Conference, Portsmouth, New Hampshire (November 2019)

  • Fringe Gardens (original play, fully staged and produced by A Happy Accident at Rochester International Fringe Festival 2018)

  • “Trump: TV Hero or Villain?” chair and presenter, panelist: “Transplanting Characters, Altering Genres” Saviors or Sociopaths: Film & History Annual Conference: Madison, Wisconsin (November 2018)

  • “B. T. Roberts’s Real Estate Debts” in Earnest: Interdisciplinary Work Inspired by the Life and Teachings of B. T. Roberts, Ed. Andrew Craig Koehl and David Basinger. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers. 2017.  https://www.amazon.com/Earnest-Interdisciplinary-Inspired-Teachings-Roberts/dp/1532606338

  • Cited in “Carol Reed, Odd Man Out (1947)” A Shaper Focus, Dr. Norman Holland, University of Florida (2017): https://www.asharperfocus.com/OddMan.html

  • Words on Screen by Michel Chion. Edited and Translated by Claudia Gorbman. Noted: “Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism” University of California Press, Vol. 45, no. 1 (2017) https://online.ucpress.edu/afterimage/article/45/1/27/20581/Review-Words-on-Screen-by-Michel-Chion

  • The Magic World of Orson Welles: Centennial Anniversary Edition by James Naramore, Noted: “Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism” University of California Press, Vol. 44, no. 4 (2017) https://online.ucpress.edu/afterimage/article/43/4/45/3342/Review-The-Magic-World-of-Orson-Welles

  • Cyrano of the South (original play, staged reading produced by Ad Hoc Players 2017, recipient of academic professional grant 2016) 

  • At the End of the Street in the Shadow: Orson Welles and the City by Matthew Asprey Gear, Noted: “Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism” University of California Press, Vol. 44, no. 3 (2016) https://online.ucpress.edu/afterimage/article/44/3/43/20516/Review-At-the-End-of-the-Street-in-the-Shadow

  • The Extraordinary Image: Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, and the Reimagining of Cinema by Robert Kolker. Noted: “Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism” University of California Press, Vol. 44, no. 6 (2017) https://online.ucpress.edu/afterimage/article/44/6/31/20560/Review-The-Extraordinary-Image-Orson-Welles-Alfred

  • Eclipse (original play, fully staged and produced by ShakeCo at Multi-Use Cultural Community Center 2016, staged reading produced by Cultural Enrichment Series 2012)

  • Living History (original play, fully staged and produced by ShakeCo, 2013)

  • “Cartographic Silences in Brian Friel’s Translations.” Studies on Themes and Motifs in Literature: Silence and the Silenced: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Ed. Leslie Boldt, Corrado Federici, and Ernesto Virgulti. New York: Peter Lang (2013) https://www.amazon.com/Silence-Silenced-Interdisciplinary-Perspectives-Literature/dp/1433123436