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 forthcom…
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. 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 won the 2025 Grammy for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album of 2025.
