There From the Start: Picking the Brain of Lucas Matheson, Inaugural SEB Member for Inventio

When speaking with Lucas Matheson, it becomes obvious that he’s a man cultivating an array of passions—ones that he’s proud of.  

Matheson, graduate of Catholic University class of 2016 with a double Major in Art History and Philosophy, was the founding Managing Editor of Inventio. Five years later, he has found his way back to Catholic University and is currently teaching Intro to Contemporary Art in the Rome School of Music, Drama, and Art. 

During his time as an undergraduate at Catholic, Matheson found himself increasingly involved in English extracurriculars, saying, “even though I wasn’t an English major, I was an interloper in that world.”

In addition to being admitted as an undergraduate tutor in the Writing Center, Matheson joined “The English Society”’s book club early on in his time at Catholic. He was the only non-English Major in it at the time, a fact “constantly made known” to him. 

It was through the book club that Matheson met and came to know Dr. Taryn Okuma. She then introduced Matheson to the Writing Center Undergraduate Tutor Program (WCUT) and eventually to Inventio, our very own undergraduate research journal. 

When she founded WCUT, Dr. Okuma incorporated a required class for all first year tutors. Matheson remembers the class as one of the best he took.

Matheson recalls that, “a big thing Taryn tried to espouse in us was trying to think about, find, and do what we could to foster this writing culture on campus. Even more broadly, to foster a thoughtful and engaged intellectual culture on campus.”

He explained that grades were irrelevant in that class; the work they were doing was for so much more than a number.

“We were to be held personally accountable, where our words were connected to us. One of the worst things that can happen in classes is that it feels like a paper, when you submit it, it just disappears; it’s not really connected to you.”

This is an age-old story in education: prompt given, paper written, grade received. It’s not personal, it’s business.

Part of the mission of Inventio, as Matheson defines alongside the Editor-in-Chief, Mallory Nygard, in the Letter-from-the-Editor set in the cover of the very first issue of the journal, is to entice students “to take responsibility for their work, to acknowledge that their papers are more than a grade.”

Inventio seeks to espouse this truth and reveal to students that their personal grapplings with intellectual questions are valuable in the world beyond transcripts. 

When Dr. Okuma first mentioned the creation of a journal for undergraduate research in the social sciences, Matheson knew he wanted to get involved. 

By the time “the Editorial Staff solidified, the wheels were already turning in a big way. The pieces were all there, we just had to bring them together.” Matheson claims the staff “had the easy part of writing and editing and designing” while Dr. Okuma, Dr. Caroline Sherman, Director of the University Honors Program, and Dr. Jennifer Paxton did all the behind-the-scenes work. 

The papers published in Inventio are the ones that each author is proud of; there is passion in their pages.

Matheson found himself approaching the production of the journal’s first issue with the same mindset: “When you’re putting your name on something, you don’t want it to be something that you’re not proud of.”

He’s still applying that mentality to his undertakings today. 

Since graduating from Catholic in 2016, Matheson has completed his Masters in Art History at Williams College has written several critiques for the international contemporary art magazine, Artforum, which was a “life-long dream” of his. 

He spent two years in Los Angeles as Associate Director of an art gallery post-grad school, but grew tired of the spaced out city and its perpetual season of smog. 

Things were already in motion for him to transition back to the East Coast when COVID-19 began to spread and “the art world went to Hell, as if it wasn’t there already.”

Settling in DC for the duration of the pandemic presented Matheson with the opportunity to not only return to his undergraduate alma mater, but to contemplate a career change. 

In between writing critiques every now and then for the magazine, Artforum, a “life-long dream” of his, Mattheson applied to law school. 

Taking a particular interest in constitutional and civil rights law, Matheson connects his fields of study with the explanation, “part of why I studied philosophy was that I was very interested in the idea of how we say that one thing is better than another thing?— whether it’s an argument or a work of literature or a sandwich.” 

Fundamental interpretive questions shape the way people live in this country and Matheson feels personally motivated to explore them for that very reason. 

Matheson thrives off of encounters that change the way a person looks at things: the way they look at the written word, a cosmos customized by individual upbringing; the way they look at art and the question of its value; the way they look at one another, on the same level of humanity.

Matheson’s involvement in producing the very first issue of Inventio leaves a lasting legacy in the archives of a publication that exists to explore the undiscussed and overlooked.