Matthew Snyder received his Ph.D. from UC Riverside's Department of English. His dissertation, entitled, Welcome to the Suck: Film and Media Phantasms of the Gulf War is an extended cultural studies work on the cinema of that war and its critical refraction of Colonialism, Inc. — as seen in the films of Werner Herzog and David O. Russell. Since completing his dissertation in 2008, he has undergone Jedi “potty-training” in SF, and has written on Children of Men, Avatar and Moon for Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA). Beyond the Ivory Maze, he is an activist in the Anti-War and Occupy Movements, and is a recent co-founder of The 28ers — an organization calling for a 28th Amendment to get money out of politics. As the quasi-religious photo on the left suggests, he just became a tenured lecturer in the University Writing Program at UC Riverside. He tries to avoid flying cake.