Attention with Intention: Matthew Ferrari on Teaching Critical Thinking in a Digital Age
By Grace Chai
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Matthew Ferrari joined Commonwealth Honors College as a lecturer in the fall of 2025, and currently teaches the first-year seminar, “Ideas That Change the World,” or Honors 201H. His teaching perspective is influenced by his field of expertise, which is film, media, and communication.
Before coming to teach at the University of Massachusetts, Ferrari earned a BA in art history and visual culture from Bates College, an MA in film and media studies from Ohio University, and a PhD in communication and media studies from UMass. In past roles he served as the Assistant Director at the Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship at Springfield College, and taught at Westfield State College and Berkshire Community College.
Ferrari’s interest in communication and art began when he attended a liberal arts college and was attracted to the wide range of knowledge promoted by a liberal arts education. He found himself drawn to the beauty, imagination, and storytelling involved in art, which has influenced how he views the entry of technology into art, particularly in artificial intelligence.
“I think the liberal arts are very important. I think the arts and humanities are in an interesting moment. I'm hoping AI reminds us about the moral imperative of creativity and the human spirit, and things like beauty, and imagination, and human storytelling,” said Ferrari.
He came to UMass to teach the seminar, drawn in by the tight-knit community of scholars at the Honors College within a big university like UMass.
“I think that the Honors College does a really good job of trying to make people feel supported and connected, and you lose that sometimes at a big university, but I don't feel that way here. It's a good community vibe,” he said.
“I love an interdisciplinary course where you're exposing students to a lot of different ways of thinking. I think what brought me here is the idea of teaching a liberal arts ideas class to a small group of seminar students,” Ferrari said, calling his return a bit of a “homecoming” for him after completing his PhD at UMass in 2014.
While Ferrari is passionate about a broad education, he also brings his interest in technology’s impact on humanity to his classes.
“I want students to think and take more seriously how media technology shapes human consciousness and culture; that's the organizing question or principle of my class,” he explained.
Ferrari added, “The way I'm teaching my classes has a bit of a moral agenda, which is that we should all be thinking about how do we want to be human in the face of encroaching technology, like technology that is more powerful and more seductive than it has ever been in any point in history.”
He compared exercising free thought in the brain to an athlete building muscle.
“When you eliminate that resistance and friction for the mind, which is also a muscle, what are you losing?” Ferrari asked. “Those are central questions I like to bring into my classes.”
Ferrari hopes that students leave his class with an ability to think more broadly about technology and how they want to use it as it continues to expand. He also wants students to be able to take their own ideas seriously.
“I want them to develop their own moral compass for how we should use technology to amplify the best parts of ourselves, but not to get in the way of our flourishing and our freedom and our autonomy,” he explained. “I want every student to leave the class and be able to be a little bit more intentional about where they're going to put their attention. Attention with intention.”
When he’s not in the classroom, Ferrari enjoys trail running, reading, watching movies, and cooking. Students interested in learning more about Ferrari’s field of study can check out his seminar offered this spring and next fall.