MattGunterman.com

Matt Gunterman is a scholar and doctoral candidate at Yale University, where he researches the American development of hygienic individualism, a spatial sense of individualism emerging in the United States as a consequence of bacteriological science. He is particularly concerned with this individualism’s influences on American religion and the nation’s consumer culture, especially its dependence on technologies of disposability. Gunterman’s work identifies potential problems in a future of growing antibacterial resistance and offers lessons for today of medical prevention from the pre-antibiotic era.

◊ ◊ ◊

A native of Kentucky, where his family has lived for over two hundred years, Gunterman has for the past decade been a leader in applying digital-age technologies to the challenges facing America’s rural communities. In 2002, seeing a decline in rural print journalism, he founded the New Millennium News, an online news source, dedicated to rural issues, that pioneered techniques of reader-generated content and citizen-journalism. In 2005, believing that emerging social-networking technologies offered an opportunity to improve the lives of rural high-school students, Gunterman formed the nonprofit that would evolve into Ruralution, Inc., an organization bringing together exceptional rural student-mentees with successful professional-mentors, all of whom themselves experienced rural upbringings and whose career-paths are related closely to student-goals. In 2007, hoping to influence the election of forward-thinking leaders in Kentucky, Gunterman established and edited DM-KY, a Kentucky-based political website whose contributors were a diverse team of writers assembled by Gunterman from across the state.

Since 2007, Gunterman has resided in New Haven, Connecticut, home to Yale University. He will receive his Ph.D. in May 2013.  While in New Haven, Gunterman has been active in the life of St. Thomas’s Episcopal Church, where he currently serves as Clerk of the Vestry, Chair of the Parish Life Ministry, and Leader of the Welcome Team.

At Yale, Gunterman will be teaching “Medicine and Religion in America,” a seminar of his own design, in summer 2012. He also regularly speaks to civic, religious, and business groups about social problems emerging from fear of infection and from rising antibiotic resistance. He is available to speak to organizations in the Greater New York City area on the following topics: Faith and Infection in America: Past, Present, and Future (30-45 mins.), and the Rise of the American Culture of Disposability: Problems and Possibilities (30-45 mins.)