Matt Wanat
Education
- Ph.D., Ohio State
- B.A., Denison
Areas of Expertise
- American Literature
- Film Studies
Research Interests
- Comparative Author Studies
- Place-Based Writing
- Crime Genres
- Ohio Authors
- The Western
Courses Taught
- American Literature I
- American Literature II
- Women's Literature
- Ecological Discourse
- Global Literature
- Literary Theory & Ethical Practice
- Writing & Rhetoric
- Writing and Research in English Studies
- Writing about the Environment
- Critical Approaches to Fiction & Nonfiction
- Critical Approaches to Poetry & Drama
- Literature and Social Justice
- Crime Cinema
- American Independent Cinema
- Film History I & II (graduate)
- Film Aesthetics (graduate)
- Film History (undergraduate)
- Film Analysis (undergraduate)
- Great Works, Enlightenment to Present
- Exploring Sustainability Management
Biography
Professor of English at Ohio University Lancaster, Matt Wanat’s books include Breaking Down Breaking Bad and The Films of Clint Eastwood, and Wanat has published critical essays, encyclopedia articles, reviews, and book chapters on a variety of authors and filmmakers. Wanat’s publications of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction are available in The Wayfarer, Coffin Bell, The Wax Paper, and Pennsylvania English.
Publications
"From the Garden." Wayfarer Magazine, May 8, 2026.
"A Proud and Booming Industry: A Colloquium on Ohio’s Musical Roots and Diaspora." By Aaron L. Jaffe, Wade Krueger, Stella McGuire, Ryan Shafer, Matt Wanat, and Jane Wells. Pittsburgh Review of Books, April 20, 2026.
"Tell Me, Tall Man." Burningword Literary Journal, October 2024. Pushcart Prize nominee.
"Walking at Night." Pennsylvania English (Fall 2024).
"The Amish Boys Read Zane Grey." The Wax Paper, no. 14 (Spring 2024).
"The Boiled Guts of Birds." Coffin Bell 3, no. 3 (Summer 2023).
"Leisure and Light Work: Coming of Age in Wendell Berry’s and Thomas Pynchon’s Novels of Extraction." In Planet Work: Labor, Leisure, and the Anthropocene, edited by Ryan Hediger. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, Winter 2022.
"Frank Traverse and the ‘Mexico Western’ in Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day (2006)." Journal of the West 61, no. 4 (Fall 2022).
"From Jilting to Jonquil: Katherine Anne Porter and Wendell Berry, Sustaining Connections, Re-engendering the Rural." south: A Scholarly Journal 44, no. 2 (Spring 2017; published Spring 2018).
The Films of Clint Eastwood: Critical Perspectives. Edited by Leonard Engel and Matt Wanat. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2018.
"Cutting." The Wayfarer (Autumn/Winter 2018).
"Birch Rot, North Dakota." The Wayfarer (Autumn/Winter 2018).
Breaking Down Breaking Bad: Critical Perspectives. Edited by Matt Wanat and Leonard Engel. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2016.
"Breaking the Caper, Subverting the Heist." In Breaking Down Breaking Bad, edited by Matt Wanat and Leonard Engel. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, Winter 2016.
"Dislocation, Dismemberment, Dystopia: From Cyberpunk to the Fiction of Wendell Berry and Ann Pancake." Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association (JMMLA) (Spring 2015).
"Membership and Masonry: Wendell Berry, Cormac McCarthy, and the Search for Wisdom." AURCO Journal (Spring 2013).
"Clintus and Siegelini: ‘We’ve Got a System. Not Much, but We’re Fond of It.’" By Matt Wanat and Mike Smrtic. In New Essays on Clint Eastwood, edited by Leonard Engel. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, Fall 2012.
"Noon Wine." The Literary Encyclopedia (Winter 2012).
"Jack Warner Schaefer." The Literary Encyclopedia (Spring 2011).
Review of Orson Welles and the Unfinished RKO Projects: A Postmodern Perspective, by Marguerite H. Rippy. Screening the Past, no. 27 (Spring 2010).
Review of Film: The Key Concepts, by Nitzan Ben-Shaul. Screening the Past, no. 25 (Fall 2009).
"Captive Subjects: Point of View and Initiation in Hombre." Western American Literature (Fall 2008).
"Writing Rhetorics, Reading Narrative." In "The River Is a Strong Brown God": Iconic Places and Characters in Twentieth-Century American Cultures, edited by Michael E. Connaughton, Suellen Rundquist, and Robert Inkster. St. Cloud, MN: College of Fine Arts and Humanities, 2008.
"Irony as Absolution." In Clint Eastwood, Actor and Director: New Perspectives, edited by Leonard Engel. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2007.
Review of American Cinema of the 1940s: Themes and Variations, by Wheeler Winston Dixon. Screening the Past, no. 21 (2007).
Review of This Wounded Cinema, This Wounded Life: Violence and Utopia in the Films of Sam Peckinpah, by Gabrielle Murray. Screening the Past, no. 21 (2007).
Review of Peckinpah’s Women: A Reappraisal of the Portrayal of Women in the Period Westerns of Sam Peckinpah, by Bill Mesce Jr. Western American Literature 38, no. 3 (Fall 2003).
"‘Fall in Behind the Major’: Cultural Border Crossing and Hero Building in Major Dundee." In Sam Peckinpah’s West: New Perspectives, edited by Leonard Engel. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2003.
Presentations and Awards
- Phi Theta Kappa Professor of the Year, Lancaster, 2023-2024
- RHE Outstanding Professor of the Year at Ohio University, Regional Higher Education, 2018-2019
- Faculty Fellowship Leaves, Spring 2018, Spring 2026