Matthew Schneider-Mayerson

Education

• Ph.D., American Studies, University of Minnesota
• B.A., American Studies, Yale University

Areas of Expertise

• Literature and the environment
• Climate fiction
• Ecotopian visions
• Environmental communication
• Climate justice
• Reproductive climate concerns
• Environmental humanities

Personal Information

My work combines humanistic and social scientific methods to examine the cultural and political dimensions of climate change, with a focus on literature and climate justice.

Current Research

I am currently conducting empirical research on the influence of environmental literature on readers, collaborating with students on a systematic analysis of the presence of climate change in short stories, co-authoring an ecotopian children’s book, and writing a book on Americans who are factoring climate change into their reproductive plans and choices.

Publications

Books

• Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, Alexa Weik von Mossner, W.P. Malecki, and Frank Hakemulder, eds. Empirical Ecocriticism: Environmental Narratives for Social Change. University of Minnesota Press, 2023.
• Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, ed. Eating Chilli Crab in the Anthropocene: Environmental Perspectives on Life in Singapore. Ethos Books, 2020.
• Matthew Schneider-Mayerson and Brent Ryan Bellamy, eds. An Ecotopian Lexicon. University of Minnesota Press, 2019.
• Matthew Schneider-Mayerson. Peak Oil: Apocalyptic Environmentalism and Libertarian Political Culture. University of Chicago Press, 2015.

Public Reports

• Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, Jerald Lim, Dominic Bellido, Moya Stringer, Adria Wilson, and Zoky Zhou. “Climate Reality On-Screen: The Climate Crisis in Popular Films, 2013-22.” Good Energy and the Buck Lab for Climate & Environment, April 2024.
• Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, Carmiel Banasky, Bruno Olmedo Quiroga, and Anna Jane Joyner. “The Climate Reality Check: A Bechdel-Wallace Test for a World on Fire.” The Buck Lab for Climate & Environment and Good Energy, March 2024.

Recent Articles and Book Chapters

• Fu Xiyao, Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, and Marvin Montefrio. “The Reproductive Climate Concerns of Young, Educated Chinese: ‘When the Nest is Upset No Egg is Left Intact.’” Environmental Sociology (2022): 10.1080/23251042.2022.2132629.
• Matthew Schneider-Mayerson. “The Environmental Politics of Reproductive Choices in the Age of Climate Change.” Environmental Politics 31.1 (2022): 152-172.
• Neo Xiaoyun and Matthew Schneider-Mayerson. “Nature, Disappeared: Anti-Environmental Values in Singapore’s History Textbooks, 1984-2015.” Environmental Education Research 28.1 (2022): 56-74.
• Matthew Schneider-Mayerson. “Performative Pedagogy: Modeling Affect and Action in Climate Change Courses.” Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities 8.1 (2021): 32-36.
• Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, Abel Gustafson, Anthony Leiserowitz, Matthew H. Goldberg, Seth A. Rosenthal, and Matthew Ballew. “Environmental Literature as Persuasion: An Experimental Test of the Effects of Reading Climate Fiction.” Environmental Communication (2020), 10.1080/17524032.2020.1814377.
• Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, Alexa Weik von Mossner, and W.P. Malecki. “Empirical Ecocriticism: Environmental Texts and Empirical Methods.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 27.2 (2020): 327-336.
• Matthew Schneider-Mayerson. “‘Just as in the Book’? The Influence of Literature on Readers’ Awareness of Climate Injustice and Perception of Climate Migrants.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 27.2 (2020): 337-364.
• Matthew Schneider-Mayerson and Leong Kit Ling. “Eco-Reproductive Concerns in the Age of Climate Change.” Climatic Change 163 (2020): 1007-1023.
• O’Gorman, Emily, Thom van Dooren, Ursula Münster, Joni Adamson, Christof Mauch, Sverker Sörlin, Marco Amiero, Kati Lindström, Donna Houston, José Augusto Pádua, Kate Rigby, Owain Jones, Judy Motion, Stephen Muecke, Chia-ju Chang, Shuyuan Lu, Christopher Jones, Lesley Green, Frank Matose, Hedley Twidle, Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, Bethany Wiggin, and Dolly Jørgensen. “Teaching the Environmental Humanities: International Perspectives and Practices.” Environmental Humanities 11.2 (2019): 427-460.
• Matthew Schneider-Mayerson. “Whose Odds? The Absence of Climate Justice in American Climate Fiction.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 26.4 (2019): 944-967.
• Matthew Schneider-Mayerson. “The Influence of Climate Fiction: An Empirical Survey of Readers.” Environmental Humanities 10.2 (2018): 473-500.
• Matthew Schneider-Mayerson. “Climate Change Fiction.” In American Literature in Transition: 2000 – 2010, edited by Rachel Greenwald Smith (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 309-321.
• Matthew Schneider-Mayerson. “Some Islands Will Rise: Singapore in the Anthropocene.” Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities 4.2-3 (2017): 166-184.

Some Public Writing

• Matthew Schneider-Mayerson. “Does Climate Fiction Make a Difference?” Literary Hub, December 16, 2021.
• Matthew Schneider-Mayerson. “To Teach Students about Climate Change, ‘Just the Facts’ Isn’t Enough.” Scientific American, September 28, 2021.
• Matthew Schneider-Mayerson. “‘Ted Lasso’ is an Unexpected Masterclass in Environmental Storytelling.” Gizmodo, September 17, 2021.