
Maya Kronfeld holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California at Berkeley. Her current book project, based on her dissertation, "Spontaneous Form: Four Studies in Consciousness and Philosophical Fiction," integrates literary studies with Kantian approaches to cognition. Her interests include English and French romanticism and modernism, philosophy of mind, and jazz studies.
Kronfeld's article "What is Holding Us Together? David Hume, Edgar Allan Poe and the Problem of Association" appeared in the Review of English Studies (2022). Her article "'Prufrock' Between Acquaintance and Description: T.S. Eliot and Bertrand Russell" is in press with Philosophy and Literature, and her chapter on "Form in Literature, Form in Cognition" is forthcoming in the Cambridge Companion to Philosophy and Literature. She has contributed the entry on Immanuel Kant to the Johns Hopkins Guide to Critical Theory and Cultural Criticism (forthcoming, 2023), and a chapter "'The Shapes My Brain Holds: Kantian Spontaneity and Virginia Woolf's The Waves" to the Cambridge Companion to Kant and Literary Studies (forthcoming, 2023). Karen Zumhagen-Yekplé and Maya Kronfeld will co-chair a special session on "Problems of Form in Literature and Philosophy" at the MLA's annual meeting in January 2023, featuring R. Lanier Anderson, Akeel Bilgrami, Judith Butler, Robert Pippin, and Michael Sawyer.
Kronfeld is also a professional pianist and teaches at the Stanford Jazz Workshop. Recent performances include the Newport Jazz Festival, BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn!, The Blue Note, and the Nublu Jazz Festival in Brazil. Her article, “The Philosopher’s Bass Drum: Adorno’s Jazz and the Politics of Rhythm” appears in Radical Philosophy, and her essay "Structure in the Moment: Rhythm Section Responsivity" was published in Jazz & Culture's special issue: "Jazz in the Present Tense," eds. Kimberly Hannon Teal, Fumi Okiji, Kwami Coleman, and Nate Sloan.
At Princeton, Kronfeld has taught her interdisciplinary seminars "Saying 'I': First Person Point of View in Philosophy and Literature" and "Ways of Knowing: Literature and Philosophy." She has also co-taught in the Humanities Sequence. In spring 2023, she will offer a course on "Conversations: Jazz and Literature."