Faculty Profile: Dr. Matto

by Andrew Frisch

When you hear the name Michael Matto, the first thought that probably comes to your mind is, "Director of the Writing Center." However, Dr. Matto is first a full-time member of the English Department faculty and a specialist in linguistics, rhetoric, and Medieval literature.

Matto grew up in a small town called Pinole, California, not far from San Francisco. He says he had a stereotypical suburban upbringing, one complete with a dog, cat, rabbit, two chickens, and a goat. He admits that the chickens and goat are not so stereotypical, and that his mother got the goat as a birthday gift.

Matto did his undergraduate work at the University of California in Berkeley, receiving a B.A. in English. He says that for the first three out of four years at Berkeley, he sat in the back of the room, didn't talk, and just went to class. In his senior year, however, one of his professors ran the course so that the students alone generated the conversation. This forced him to participate and go to office hours. While Matto believes that students might as well talk and get their opinion heard, he believes that students should not be pressured into being "loud participants." If a student wants to see a professor in office hours, Matto thinks that he or she should do so.

Matto's favorite course in college was Philosophy of Grammar with the inimitable Julian Boyd, a professor who he says used a wide variety of teaching techniques and tactics. Boyd took teaching very seriously, and Matto says he learned more about language from him in one semester than during the rest of his education. In second place is Cognitive Linguistics with George Lakoff; it opened his eyes to the figurative nature of all language, from everyday conversations to poems.

After Berkeley, Matto got his M.A. and Ph.D. in English from New York University. In addition to linguistics, rhetoric, and Medieval literature, he is also interested in Old English language and literature, history of subjectivity, and theories of metaphor.

Before coming to Adelphi, Matto worked part-time at New York University, and full-time at Iona College and Yeshiva University. Also, Matto has been published four times and lectured at numerous conferences.

Matto wants people to know that he is an English teacher, with the Writing Center being a side position, kind of like being a chairperson of a department. He finds that it is hard to get everyone to understand that. Matto decided to come to Adelphi because its "new faculty, new construction plans, more housing, and increasing enrollments suggest an energy that is often lacking in other institutions."

Matto's course load includes good old English 107 (The Art and Craft of Writing), History, Theory, and Practice of Composition and Rhetoric (undergraduate/graduate), History of the English Language (undergraduate/graduate), and finally, a freshman Seminar called Villains and Vilification. He hopes to teach some literature courses as well.

Matto says that his favorite part of directing the Writing Center is working with his tutors, and seeing them become more confident and comfortable working with the students, although he could do without all the administrative headaches.

Matto thinks the campus is beautiful, the food is awful, and that his colleagues are fantastic. He appreciates all the support he gets from faculty, administration, and students with his work in the Writing Center. Matto is also involved in helping to reorganize the undergraduate English curriculum, and creating a graduate curriculum. Also, he hopes to be able to help faculty in other disciplines find ways to use writing effectively in their classrooms, but without assigning more papers because, let's face it, nobody wants that!

It's fun food fact time! Matto's favorite fast food restaurant is Gray's Papaya in New York City, which he claims has the best hot dogs he's ever tasted.

Matto's main goal as a professor is to make his students uncomfortable. He wants his students to at least once be so shaken by something that they have to ask themselves questions about what they always thought was true. He says that "learning comes with a loss," a loss of what you thought was true previously, and what you wish was true. His final thought is, "true learning comes at the cost of a comfortable way of thinking."