Francey Russell
Francey Russell joined the department in 2019. She works on issues in moral psychology and ethics broadly construed, often overlapping with topics in social philosophy and aesthetics, and drawing from contemporary and historical sources. In terms of figures, she works mostly on Kant and Freud, but also Nietzsche and Cavell. She is writing a book on the concept of self-opacity and its significance for philosophical accounts of agency and moral psychology. Prof. Russell also writes film criticism, and is working on a project on cinematic aesthetics in genre films. Before joining Barnard, Prof. Russell was a Postdoctoral Associate in philosophy and the humanities at Yale University.
Interview in The Gadfly: Francey Russell on Cultural Criticism, Academic Style and Film
BA University of Toronto
MA New School for Social Research
PhD University of Chicago
Moral psychology; Ethics; Kant; Freud; Aesthetics
I. Journal Articles
1. “Obscure representations from a pragmatic point of view.” European Journal of Philosophy. Forthcoming
2. “Moral Psychology as Soul Picture.” The Philosophical Quarterly. Forthcoming.
3. “Shame and Philosophy.” Raritan Quarterly. Winter 2025.
4. “Kant’s Fantasy.” Mind. Vol. 133, No. 531, 2024.
5. “Opacity.” The Philosopher. Vol. 110, No. 3, 2022.
6. “Picturing the Mind: Freud on Metapsychology and Methodology.” WestEnd. Neue Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung. 2022.
7. “How shall we put ourselves in touch with reality? James Baldwin, Film, and Acknowledgment.” Social Research (2021). Vol. 81, No. 4.
8. “Kantian Self-Conceit and the Two Guises of Authority.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy (2019). Vol. 50, No. 2.
9. “Unity and Synthesis in the Ego Ideal: Reading Freud’s Concept Through Kant’s Philosophy.” American Imago (2012). Vol. 69, No. 3.
II. Articles in Edited Collections
1. “The Opacity of Human Action.” Kant’s Fundamental Assumptions. Eds. Colin Marshall and Colin McLear. Oxford University Press. Forthcoming.
2. “Opacity.” In “The New Basics: Person.” The Philosopher. September, 2022.
3. “I Want to Know More About You: Knowing and Acknowledging in Cavell and Chinatown.”Cavell and Aesthetic Understanding. Ed. Garry Hagberg (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).
4. “The Space of Pathos: Meaning, Anxiety, and Ethics in Heidegger’s Being and Time.” Existenzphilosophie und Ethik. Eds. Hans Feger and Manuela Hackel. (De Gruyter, 2013).
III. Book Reviews
1. Tamar Schapiro. Feeling Like It: A Theory of Inclination and Will. Oxford University Press, 2021. Philosophical Review (forthcoming 2022).
2. Robert Pippin. Douglas Sirk: Philosophical Filmmaker. Bloomsbury, 2021. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (March 2022).
3. “The Screening and Screenable Animal.” Response to Richard Eldridge. Werner Herzog: Philosophical Filmmaker. Bloomsbury, 2018. Existenz. Vol.15, No.1. Spring 2020.
4. Laura Papish. Kant on Evil, Self-Deception, and Moral Reform. Oxford University Press, 2018. Journal of the History of Philosophy. April 2020.
5. Melissa Merritt. Kant on Reflection and Virtue. Cambridge University Press, 2018. Society for German Idealism and Romanticism. Vol.1, No.1. 2019.