Dr. Ashley A. Matthies

Broadly speaking, my research explores how identity is produced in digital contexts through the linkage of popular discourses and visual media with socio-political and material effects. Specifically, I focus on the ways gendered logics, narratives, and imagery are used by far-right, white, and male supremacist extremist cultures online to shift normative understandings of identity (race, sexuality, gender, class, nationality, etc.,) as a mechanism for promoting racial and gendered hate, political violence, and terrorism. I take a transdisciplinary approach to my work and teaching drawing on and incorporating my training in critical media and cultural studies with Feminist Science and Technology Studies (STS) and visual rhetorical methods from an intersectional feminist perspective. Through this frame, I have developed a robust research program studying the media cultures and persuasive force of Far-Right, Male Supremacist (Incels and “manosphere” groups), and QAnon digital propaganda. 

 

A key goal of my research understanding how media and popular culture act as sites for negotiation of hegemonic processes with effects on political speech, strategies, and outcomes. To do this work, I use a variety of critical methods including critical media, cultural, visual rhetorical, and discursive analyses to explore media and popular phenomena from an intersectional perspective. Along with my PhD., I have completed a graduate certificate in Women’s and Gender Studies.

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My recent project, titled “Fierce Mamas: New Maternalism, Social Surveillance, and the Politics of Solidarity,” blends critical race, black feminist, and feminist informatics theory to analyze ways that motherhood works infrastructurally to (re)produce cultural hegemony. 

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My teaching includes a range of courses on Cultural Diversity; Gender, Communication, & Culture and Persuasion all taught through my specializations in Media Studies, Cultural Studies, and Visual Rhetorical Criticism. In addition, I also teach courses in Terrorism and Political Violence and Analyzing Digital Propaganda, as well as Interpersonal and Organizational Communication. I have also acted as the instructor of record and Coordinator for the Communication Department's Internships course.

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In addition to my scholarship,  I have more than eight years of experience working with faculty research development and funding for academic research as well as more than a year of direct grant support on each of three major grant projects.