Matthew Reynolds

reynolmm@whitman.edu
Olin Hall 125
509-527-5240
Curriculum Vitae

Professor Reynolds grew up in the Los Angeles suburb of Altadena. He attended graduate school at San Francisco State University and the University of Rochester and received his Ph.D. in Visual and Cultural Studies. He has worked as a film programmer and archives assistant at the George Eastman House Museum of Photography and Film’s Dryden Theater and as a Program Coordinator at the Getty Research Institute. He has taught for over 25 years at the college and university level, including San Francisco State, University of California Riverside, Otis College of Art and Design, Carnegie Mellon University and Whitman College. About his teaching at Whitman, Reynolds says: “I love my students. Their commitment to their own learning, openness to new ideas, curiosity and concern for our shared world has made this a wonderful place to teach.”

Ph.D. Visual and Cultural Studies
University of Rochester
2004

M.A. Visual and Cultural Studies
University of Rochester
2000

M.A. Cinema Studies
San Francisco State University
1996

B.A. Liberal Studies, Minor in Film Studies
Sonoma State University
1991

Among the interests of Professor Reynolds are the intersections between images, objects, audiences and their shared contexts. His core concerns include understanding how the visual world is shaped by the dynamics of power, wealth (or its lack), race, ethnicity and gender. He has published in edited collections and scholarly journals. He is currently completing a book-length manuscript on Maya Lin's Confluence Project, a series of earthworks installed along the Columbia River that confronts issues of climate change and habitat depletion in the Pacific Northwest —a transformation brought about by over two centuries of contact between peoples, species, water systems and industrial development. An exhibition devoted to the Confluence Project archival materials now housed in Penrose Library will be held in Spring 2021 in the Maxey Museum and included as part of the international multi-venue program, Extraction: Art on the Edge of the Abyss.

“Along the Columbia: Maya Lin and the Confluence Project” (exhibition and catalogue essay), Peter Rutledge Koch, Extraction: Art at the Edge of the Abyss (Berkeley, CA: The CODEX Foundation, 2020).

“The World in Boxes: Environmental Art Before Earthworks,” Environmental Humanities (2020, under review).

“Maps to the Unknown: Jacob Hashimoto at Whitman College,” an essay-booklet to accompany the exhibition of Jacob Hashimoto’s work in the Sheehan Gallery and the permanent installation of “When Nothing Ends, Nothing Begins” in the foyer of Penrose Library, 2017.

“The Tourism Shell Game: Redevelopment and Race in Overlooked Places,” a review essay by Matthew Reynolds, Journal of Urban History, 2018, Vol. 44(6) 1306–1311

“Dream Factory Détournement: Freewaves, Art and Urban Redevelopment in Hollywood, CA.” Spectacles: A Global Studies Collection, Zahi Zalloua and Bruce Magnusson, eds., (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2016)

“Ed Ruscha’s Moving Pictures: Hollywood Boulevard Then & Now,” David James ed., Alternative Projections: Experimental Film in Los Angeles, 1945-1980, (London: John Libbey Publishing, 2015)

“A Massive Multi-Faceted Screening Room: LA Freewaves Reinvents the Arts Festival along Hollywood Boulevard.” Public: Art, Culture, Ideas 23: 45 (2012): 146-157.

“A Glamorous Gentrification: Public Art and Urban Revitalization in Hollywood, CA.” Journal of Urban Design 17:1 (2012): 101-116

Faculty-Student Summer Research Award, Whitman College, 2020, 2018.

Native Case Studies Institute, The Evergreen State College, Summer, 2019.

Council On International Educational Exchange (CIEE), Faculty Development Seminar, Northern Ireland and Ireland: Culture and Conflict—A Study of Music, Sound, and Space, 2015.

Student-Faculty Research Award, Whitman College, 2015, 2013, 2011, 2010.

Abshire Research Scholar Award with Sydney Stasch, 2010.