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
Selected Publications
- “Authority and Ambivalence: Kant, Freud, and Moral Psychology.” Mind. Forthcoming.
- “Navigating the Realm of Shades: On Kant’s Dreams in Dreams of a Spirit-Seer.” History of Philosophy Quarterly. Special issue on “The Young Kant.” Forthcoming.
- “Shame and Philosophy.” Raritan Quarterly. 2025.
- “Moral Psychology as Soul-Picture.” The Philosophical Quarterly. 2024.
- “Obscure Representations from a Pragmatic Point of View.” European Journal of Philosophy. 2024.
- “Kant’s Fantasy.” Mind. 2024.
- “Opacity.” “The New Basics: Person.” The Philosopher. September, 2022.
- “Picturing the Mind: Freud on Metapsychology and Methodology.” WestEnd. Neue Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung. 2022.
- “How Shall We Put Ourselves in Touch with Reality? James Baldwin, Film, and Acknowledgment.” Social Research. 2021.
- “Kantian Self-Conceit and the Two Guises of Authority.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy. 2019.
- “Unity and Synthesis in the Ego Ideal: Reading Freud’s Concept Through Kant’s Philosophy.” American Imago. 2012.