On Monday, July 1, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences will welcome Robert Matz, PhD, as its new senior associate dean for curriculum and technology.
Matz arrived at George Mason University in 1993 as an assistant professor. He has served as the chair of the English department since 2008. He holds an AB, summa cum laude, in English from Cornell University, and an MA and PhD in English, both from the Johns Hopkins University.
Matz’s field of study is Renaissance literature; he has published extensively on William Shakespeare, Renaissance poetry and poetic theory. He serves on the Folger Institute Central Executive Committee at the Folger Shakespeare Library. He is also a staunch advocate for humanities and social sciences education.
Recently, Matz contributed to a Wall Street Journal article on the employability of humanities graduates. The article’s author, Francesca Donner, examined the pursuit of a humanities degree in an economic climate with limited prospects for recent college graduates. She describes a decline in the number of humanities majors at Harvard University, but includes the perspectives of several experts who are more encouraging.
Matz is one of those experts. His essay, “Can You Make a Living After Studying English? Sure You Can,” emphasizes that the study of English is hardly a “soft” discipline. Indeed, in his experience, he found that “some students couldn’t cut it” because of the rigors of writing clearly, approaching questions creatively and originally, and “extrapolating from the particular to the general.”
Donner contacted Matz after reading his Open Letter to Garrison Keillor, published on the website Inside Higher Ed, where he objected to the humorist’s characterization of English majors as barely unemployable.
“I understand the joke, but I think it’s gotten stale, and it’s not true, and it’s time to move on,” explained Matz. Though he never received a response from Keillor, Donner recalled the open letter and approached Matz for her article.
“The story about humanities or social sciences people not getting jobs makes for an exciting story,” said Matz. “When we have a general sense about rates of unemployment being higher than what we’d like for students coming out of college, it plays to that fear.”
The promotion of humanities and social sciences education will almost certainly be on Matz’s mind as he begins his new position. He looks forward to the new challenges of the job: “As chair, I’ve worked with the dean’s office in very productive ways for the last several years, and I’m looking forward to helping other chairs and other departments reach their goals, and also working with a really top group of people in the deans’ office.”