Matthew Reising

Assistant Professor

CONTACT

matthew.reising@austin.utexas.edu

Matthew K. Reising is assistant professor in the School of Civic Leadership. His research focuses on freedom and constitutionalism in the history of political thought, from the classical and medieval world to the American colonies. His articles have appeared in a range of academic journals, including The Thomist, The Journal of Politics, Polity, American Political Thought, and Polis.

Before joining the School of Civic Leadership, Reising was a John and Daria Barry Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the James Madison Program at Princeton University and assistant director of the Zavala Program for Constitutional Studies at Baylor University.

Education

AS in general studies, Vincennes University

BA in history, political science, and philosophy, Ashland University

MA in political science, Baylor University

PhD in political science, Baylor University

Publications

Herodotus and the Birth of Freedom

Political Philosophy

MKR_Public_CV (2)

Herodotus and the Birth of Freedom: Liberty in Ancient Greece and Persia. Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press, Forthcoming.

“A Testament to Hope: The Natural Law Politics of Phillis Wheatley Peters’ Poetry,” Journal of Politics, forthcoming.

“The Contested Reception of Herodotus’s History in American Antebellum Slavery Debates,” Polity, forthcoming.

2024

“What Happened to Joy? A Metastructural Examination of Joy in the Summa Theologiae,” The Thomist 88, no. 4: 627-652.

“Aquinas on the Socratic Paradox and the Problem of Virtue,” History of Political Thought 45, no. 3: 425-447.

“The King’s House or the Tyrant’s Palace? Rethinking Persia in Herodotus’s History,” Polis: The Journal for Ancient Greek and Roman Political Thought 41, no. 2: 203-226.

“Rethinking Intellectual Ecumenicism in Interfaith Debates on God’s Existence: From Avicenna’s Salvation and Maimonides’ Guide to Aquinas’s De Ente,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 59, no. 2: 242-262.

“The Dialectical Foundations of Natural Law in Aquinas’s De Ente et Essentia,” Perspectives on Political Science 53, no. 3: 154-163.

2022

“James Otis and the Glorious Revolution in America,” American Political Thought 11, no. 2 (2022): 161-184; awarded “The Best Article in American Political Thought for 2023” by the American Political Science Association.