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Maya Kronfeld

Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor of Literature
Literature

Overview


Maya Kronfeld is Assistant Professor of Theory in the Literature Program at Duke University, with secondary appointments in the Philosophy Department and the Music Department. After completing her PhD in Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley, Kronfeld was the Cotsen fellow in the Princeton Society of Fellows. Her book project, Spontaneous Form: Philosophy, Literature, Jazz integrates studies of literary Romanticism and Modernism with Kantian and post-Kantian approaches to the philosophy of mind and Black Music Studies. Her work appears in Radical Philosophy, Review of English Studies, Jazz & Culture, Philosophy and Literature, and is forthcoming in Boundary 2, Political Concepts, The Cambridge Companion to Philosophy and Literature, the Cambridge Guide to Kant and Literary Studies and The Johns Hopkins Guide to Critical and Cultural Theory. 

Kronfeld's research areas of focus include Literature and Philosophy, Aesthetics and Literary Theory, Hume, Kant, William James, Bertrand Russell, Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire, Edgar Allan Poe, T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, English and French Romanticism and Modernism, Jazz and Black Music Studies, African-American Literature, Philosophy of Mind, Critical Epistemology, Cognitive Metaphor Theory. 

Kronfeld is also a professional pianist who has collaborated with Georgia Anne Muldrow, Taylor Eigsti, Toshi Reagon, Nona Hendryx, Thana Alexa and Sánchez, Nicole Mitchell and Christian McBride, among others, and lent her skills to drummer-led projects by Justin Brown, Blaque Dynamite, Nikki Glaspie and Thomas Pridgen. She is piano faculty at the Stanford Jazz Workshop, and performed most recently at the Newport and Monterey Jazz Festivals. She played keyboards on Nicole Zuraitis’ 2024 Grammy-Winning Album, and her keyboard work with Eigsti is currently Grammy-nominated for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album of 2025.

Current Appointments & Affiliations


Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor of Literature · 2025 - Present Literature, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences
Assistant Professor of Literature · 2023 - Present Literature, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences
Assistant Professor of Music · 2024 - Present Music, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences
Assistant Professor of Philosophy · 2024 - Present Philosophy, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences

In the News


Published February 4, 2025
Literature Professor Has the Grammy Magic for Second Year in a Row
Published February 9, 2024
Literature Professor Is Winning Acclaim for Her Jazz
Published September 15, 2023
Maya Kronfeld: Literature, Philosophy and All That Jazz

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Recent Publications


Spontaneity

Journal Article Political Concepts: A Lexicon · July 2025 Link to item Cite

" 'The Shapes My Brain Holds': Kantian Spontaneity and Virginia Woolf's The Waves"

Chapter · May 2025 This chapter suggests a blueprint for reading literature and philosophy together, through a Kantian notion of spontaneous cognitive form that is flexible and linked with the underpinnings of objective knowledge. While “stream-of-consciousness” fiction is o ... Link to item Cite
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Education, Training & Certifications


University of California, Berkeley · 2020 Ph.D.