Matthew Day

Associate Professor of Religion
Dr. Matthew Day (and Freddie)

Contact Information

Area
Religion, Ethics, and Philosophy
Faculty
Office Location
128D Diffenbaugh

Background

I tend to find specific questions all-consuming at one moment and ontologically dull at another. This helps to explain why I've written about such disparate topics as:

  • Evolutionary taxonomy, anti-essentialism, and the religion category;
  • Jacobean natural philosophy, urban commerce, and the “science” of money;
  • The peculiar collision between Biblical criticism and evolutionary theory in the nineteenth century;
  • The medicalization of religio-political dissent in Georgian England;
  • Household debt as a key component of class and capital after the Second World War

My primary areas of interest are modern political and social theory, broadly construed. My book, No Bosses, No Gods, was published as part of De Gruyter's Religion & Reason series in 2023. I’m currently working on Religion, Socialism, and the Critique of Capital—a two-volume collection of German-language translations of writings by Marx, Engels, and Second International Marxists regarding religion.

I adore Oaxacan food, detest having my picture taken, and wish I'd learned Russian somewhere along the way. My wife and I have two sons and a modestly clever Golden Retriever named Duck. We spend our summers in Downeast Maine renovating a mid-nineteenth-century farmhouse and sailing the prickly waters of Cobscook Bay.

Recent Graduate Seminars

  • Marx, Weber, Bourdieu
  • The Landscapes of American Capitalism


Courses

Fall 2023
  • REL3142: Religion, Self and Society
  • REL3171: Topics in Ethics: Religion & Revolution (Honors)
Spring 2024
  • REL3142: Religion, Self and Society
  • REL3171: Topics in Ethics: Religion & Revolution