Matthew Spencer

Education

PhD, Middle Tennessee State University

About Me

Matthew Spencer's research routinely examines radical environmentalism and the rhetoric of progress. Within this oppositional framework, he is interested in questions of climate change, climate equity, and human perception. He is a member of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment, The Thoreau Society and The Cormac McCarthy Society. 

Honors and Awards

Auburn English Department Lecturer Service Award (x2)
Gulf Faculty Fellowship
Honors College Honor Your Teaching Fellowship
University Writing Writing and Wellbeing Fellowship

Research Interests

radical environmentalism and the rhetoric of progress

Publications

“Genre Sabotage: How to Blow Up a Pipeline and the Polemic Potential of the Eco-Thriller,” The New Polemic: Cinematic Rhetoric from Get Out to Barbenheimer, eds. Christopher Carter, Daniel Floyd, and Zachary Griffith, forthcoming from Parlor Press. 

“‘Toward an Otherwise’: Decolonizing Epistemology and Ecology in The Last Wave,” coauthored with Will Underland, Imagining Ecocatastrophe: Reading Literary and Cultural Texts in the Global Context, eds. Scott Slovic, Joyjit Ghosh, and Samit Kumar Maiti, Routledge, 2026.  

“Amitav Ghosh’s The Great Derangement, Close Reading, and Moments of Recognition,” Teaching Anglophone South Asian Diasporic Literature, ed. Nalini Iver and Pallavi Rastogi, MLA Options for Teaching, 2024. 

"Put on the Full Armor of God: Faith and Radicalism in First Reformed,” Film as an Expression of Spirituality: The Arts and Faith Top 100 Films, ed. Kenneth Morefield, Cambridge Scholars, 2023. 

“They Fear Us Because We Are Fearless: Women-Led Global Environmental Advocacy and its Enemies,” In the Crossfire of History: Revisiting Women’s War Resistance Discourse, eds. Lava Asaad and Fayeza Hasanat, Rutgers UP, 2022.

Courses Taught

ENGL 1100: Composition I 
ENGL 1120: Composition II
ENGL 2250: American Literature before 1865
ENGL 2260: American Literature after 1865
ENGL 3730: Representations
HONR 3007: Honors Seminar