Expertise

Critical Theory; Marxism, German Idealism; the history of political thought; the history and theory of the novel, especially the nineteenth-century European realist novel

Biography

Matthew J. Smetona is an Associate Professor of Instruction in the Intellectual Heritage Program. His research interests center on critical theory, the history of political thought, and the history of the novel. His most recent book, Recovering the Later Georg Lukács: A Study on the Unity of His Thought, was published in 2023 by the MIT Press. A précis of the book will be published in the Jahrbuch der Internationalen Georg-Lukács-Gesellschaft. His first book, Hegel’s Logical Comprehension of the Modern State, was published in 2013 by Lexington Books and reviewed in Perspectives on Politics. He is the author of peer-reviewed articles published in Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, Rethinking Marxism, Angelaki, Theoria, Telos, and Epoché; book chapters published in Georg Lukács and the Possibilities of Critical Social Ontology (Brill, 2019) (ed. Michael J. Thompson) and Hegel’s Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Politics (Routledge, 2018) (ed. Michael J. Thompson); and a book review published in The Philosophical Quarterly. He serves on the editorial board of Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities as a contributing editor, and he has served as a manuscript referee for the University of Michigan Press, Routledge, Historical Materialism, European Journal of Political Theory, Constellations, Journal of Social Philosophy and Political Research Quarterly. He received his Ph.D. in political science from Temple University. 

Website

Selected Publications

Books:

• Recovering the Later Georg Lukács: A Study on the Unity of His Thought. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2023.
• Hegel’s Logical Comprehension of the Modern State. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013. 
• Reviewed in Perspectives on Politics 12, no. 4 (Dec. 2014): 907-909.

Peer Reviewed Articles:

• Lukács and the Project of a Marxist Literary History: Balzac and Dostoevsky.” Interdisciplinary Literary Studies: A Journal of Criticism and Theory vol. 20, no. 3 (2018): 340-370.
• “Reification: A Defense of Lukács’s Original Formulation.” Forthcoming in Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities vol. 23, no. 5 (2018).
• “On the interrelation of production and reproduction: The analytical contribution of Marxist-feminism.” Theoria: A Journal of Political and Social Theory vol. 65, no. 156 (Sep. 2018): 52-75.
• “Marx’s normative understanding of the capitalist system.” Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society vol. 27, no. 1 (Jan. 2015): 51-64.
• “Hegel and Marx on the spurious infinity of modern civil society.” Telos vol. 166 (Spring 2014): 122-142.
• “Marx’s inferential commitment to Hegel’s idealism in the Grundrisse.” Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy vol. 16, no. 2 (2012): 351-372.

Book Chapters:

• “Lukács’s ontology of social being and the material basis of intentionality.” In Georg Lukács and the Possibilities of Critical Social  Ontology, ed. Michael J. Thompson, 41-77. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2019.
• “Hegel and the end of a particular historical development.” In Hegel’s Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Politics, ed. Michael J. Thompson, 301-325. London and New York: Routledge, 2019.

Book Review: 

• Hegel and the Metaphysical Frontiers of Political Theory. The Philosophical Quarterly vol. 66, no. 263 (April 2016): 426-429.

Courses Taught

• Intellectual Heritage 0851 and 0951 (Honors)
• Intellectual Heritage 0852 and 0952 (Honors)
• Introduction to Political Philosophy