Laura McMahon

A photo of Laura McMahon

Associate Professor

History and Philosophy; Women's and Gender Studies Department

702D Pray Harrold

734.487.0853

[email protected]

Education

  • Ph.D., Philosophy, Villanova University, 2015
  • MA, Philosophy, University of Guelph, 2010
  • BA, English Literature and Philosophy, McGill University, 2009

Interests and Expertise

Professor McMahon is Secretary-Treasurer of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy and was President of the Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy from 2019-2023. Her research is focused in 20th-Century Continental Philosophy (especially Phenomenology and Existentialism), Social and Political Philosophy, and Feminist Philosophy. She uses resources from the philosophical tradition of phenomenology--especially the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty--to consider the nature of political identity and transformation. Professor McMahon is also a Department Member in Women's & Gender Studies.

Courses

  • PHIL 100 Introduction to Philosophy
  • PHIL 225 Philosophy and Society
  • PHIL 226/WGST 226 Feminist Theory
  • PHIL 260 Existentialism
  • PHIL 310W Aesthetics
  • PHIL 332W Nineteenth-Century Philosophy
  • PHIL 470W/570 Twentieth-Century European Philosophy
  • PHIL 472W/572 Philosophy and Narrative
  • PHIL 495W/595 Phenomenology
  • PHIL 601 First Year Seminar

Publications and Presentations

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

  • “The Politics of Vulnerability and the School for Peace: Insights from Butler, Merleau-Ponty, and Family Systems Theory.” Puncta: Journal of Critical Phenomenology (2024), 122-44.
  • “Existentialism and Political Transformation: Sartre and the Ambiguities of Freedom and Praxis.” The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Existentialism. Eds. Kevin Aho, Megan Altman, and Hans Pederson. Routledge (2024), 93-105.
  • “The Virtue of Vulnerability: Merleau-Ponty and Minuchin on the Boundaries of Personal Identity.” Philosophical Health: Thinking as a Way of Healing. Ed. Luis de Miranda. Bloomsbury (2024), 91-102.
  • “The Phenomenological Sense of Hannah Arendt: Plurality, Modernity, and Political Action.” Hannah Arendt and the History of Thought. Eds. Marguerite La Caze and Daniel Brennan. Lexington Books (2022), 151-80.

  • “The Poverty and Richness of the Imaginary: Sartre on (Anti-)Racist Ways of Seeing.” Sartre Studies International. Vol. 27, no. 2 (2021), 87-100.

  • “The ‘Great Phantom’: Merleau-Ponty on Habitus, Freedom, and Political Transformation.” Transforming Politics with Merleau-Ponty: Thinking Beyond the State. Ed. Jérôme Melançon. Rowman & Littlefield (2021), 87-106.
  • “Phenomenological Variation and Intercultural Transformation: Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology and Abu-Lughod’s Ethnography in Dialogue.” Studia UBB-Philosophia Vol. 66, no. 1 (2021), 67-98.
  • "Religion, Multiculturalism, and Phenomenology as a Critical Practice: Lessons from the Algerian War of Independence." Puncta: Journal of Critical Phenomenology. Vol. 3, no. 1 (2020): 1-26.
  • “‘The Separation That is Not a Separation But a Form of Union’: Merleau-Ponty and Feminist Object Relations Theory in Dialogue.” Human Studies 43 (2020), 37-60.
  • "Freedom as (Self-)Expression: Natality and the Temporality of Action in Merleau-Ponty and Arendt." The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 57, no. 1 (2019), 56-79. 
  • “(Un)Healthy Systems: Merleau-Ponty, Dewey, and the Dynamic Equilibrium Between Self and Environment.” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Vol. 32, no. 4 (2018), 607-627.
  • “Phenomenology as First-Order Perception: Speech, Vision, and Reflection in Merleau-Ponty.” Perception and Its Development in Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy, eds. Kirsten Jacobson and John Russon (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017).
  • “‘Thinking According to Others’: Expression, Intimacy, and the Passage of Time in Merleau-Ponty and Woolf.” Phenomenology and the Arts, eds. Peter Costello and Licia Carlson (Lexington Books, 2016).
  • “The Phantom Organic: Merleau-Ponty and the Psychoanalysis of Nature.” Chiasmi International 16 (2015), 275-90.
  • “Home Invasions: Phenomenological and Psychoanalytic Reflections on Embodiment Relations, Vulnerability, and Breakdown.” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy Vol. 28, no. 3 (2014), 358-69.

Public Philosophy

  • “Vulnerability, Freedom, and Political Transformation.” Blog of the American Philosophical Association: Women in Philosophy Series. January 31, 2020 (Online).

Book Reviews

  • Review of Rajiv Kaushik’s Merleau-Ponty Between Philosophy and Symbolism: The Matrixed Ontology (SUNY, 2019). Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, June 18, 2020.
  • Review of Susan Bredlau’s The Other in Perception: A Phenomenological Account of Our Experience of Other Persons (SUNY, 2018). Continental Philosophy Review Vol 52, no. 4 (2020): 419-23.
  • Review of Don Beith’s The Birth of Sense: Generative Passivity in Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy (Ohio UP, 2018). Environmental Philosophy Vol. 16, no. 1 (2019): 241-44.
  • Review of Judith Wambacq's Thinking Between Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty (Ohio University Press, 2017), Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, July 19, 2018.
  • Review of Scott Marratto's The Intercorporeal Self: Merleau-Ponty on Subjectivity (State University of New York Press, 2012), Symposium, March 19, 2013.

Dissertation

  • Vulnerability and Security: Merleau-Ponty on Personal and Political Life.

Selected Professional Presentations

  • “Freedom and Form: Merleau-Ponty, Dewey, and the Aesthetic Nature of Political Transformation." Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy. Boston, MA: March 28-30, 2024.
  • “Arendt’s Phenomenology of Political Existence: Plurality, Visibility, and Power in the U.S. Disability Rights Movement.” University of Guelph Philosophy Speaker Series. Guelph, ON: January 26, 2023.
  • “The Virtue of Vulnerability: Merleau-Ponty and Minuchin on the Boundaries of PersonalIdentity.” The International Merleau-Ponty Circle. Washington, DC: November 10-12, 2022. 
  • “The Poverty and Richness of the Imaginary: Sartre on (Anti-)Racist Ways of Seeing.” The North American Sartre Society. Online: October 29-30, 2021.
  • “Essential Insecurity: Humanism, Violence, and Political Action in Merleau-Ponty and Fanon.” Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. Online: September 24-25, 2021.
  • “Phenomenological Variation and Multicultural Transformation.” Philosophy Colloquium. Oakland University. Online: December 4, 2020.
  • “Essential Insecurity: History, Action, and Tragedy in Merleau-Ponty,” Philosophy Colloquium Series, Western Michigan University. Kalamazoo, MI: February 7, 2020.
  • “‘The Separation That is Not a Separation But a Form of Union’: Merleau-Ponty and Feminist Object Relations Theory in Dialogue.”  Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy.  Pittsburgh, PA: October 31-November 2, 2019.
  • “Palimpsestic Transformations: Religion, Multiculturalism, and Phenomenology as a Critical Practice.” The Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy.  Lennoxville, QC: September 26-28, 2019.
  • “The ‘Great Phantom’: Merleau-Ponty on Habitus, Freedom, and Political Transformation.”  The International Merleau-Ponty Circle.  New York, NY: September 12-14, 2019.
  • “‘The Courage for Anxiety’: Resoluteness, Repetition, and Historicity in Being and Time.” Bishop University’s Heidegger Symposium. Lennoxville, QC: November 10, 2018."
  • On Vulnerability and Security: Syncretic Experience, Recognition, and the Intercorporeal Formation of Selfhood in Merleau-Ponty," The Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy (Calgary, AB: November 15-17, 2018).
  • "Vulnerability, Destiny, and Responsibility in Oedipus Rex," Seminar on Greek Tragedy (Windsor, ON: January 20, 2018).
  • "(Un)Healthy Systems: Merleau-Ponty, Dewey, and the Dynamic Equilibrium Between Self and Environment,” The International Merleau-Ponty Circle (Albuquerque, NM, November 2-4, 2017); Society for Phenomenology and the Human Sciences Memphis, TN: October 19-21, 2017).
  • “Freedom as (Self-)Expression: Natality and the Temporality of Action in Bergson, Arendt, and Merleau-Ponty,” The Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy (Toronto, ON: September 28-30, 2017).
  • “Eros and Logos: An Interpretation of Merleau-Ponty’s ‘The Body as a Sexed Being,’” The Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy (Halifax, NS: September 29-October 1, 2016); Society for Phenomenology and the Human Sciences (Salt Lake City, UT: October 20-22, 2016).
  • “The ‘Great Phantom’: Merleau-Ponty on Habit, Group Life, and Political Solidarity,” Eastern Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association (Washington, D.C., January 6-8, 2016).
  • “Habits of Autonomy: Merleau-Ponty, Feminist Philosophy, and the Virtue of Vulnerability,” Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (New Orleans, October 23-25, 2014); philoSOPHIA (State College, PA, May 1-4, 2014).
  • “Home Invasions: Embodiment, Vulnerability, and Breakdown in Merleau-Ponty,” Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (Eugene, OR, October 24-26, 2013)
  • “The Phantom Organic: Merleau-Ponty and the Psychoanalysis of Nature,” International Merleau-Ponty Circle (Pittsburgh, PA, September 26-28, 2013) [*Winner of the M. C. Dillon Award for best paper by a graduate student]; Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy (Toronto, ON, October 10-12, 2013).
  • “Knowing the Difference: Eros and Writing in Plato’s Phaedrus,” Pennsylvania Circle of Ancient Philosophy (Pittsburgh, PA, February 16-17, 2013).
  • “‘We Have Yet to Become Human’”: Reappropriating Universal Human Rights with Judith Butler,” On the Concept of Life in Ancient Greek Philosophy, Participants’ Conference, Collegium Phaenomenologicum (Cittá di Castello, Italy, July 7-8, 2012).
  • “Positioning Foucault: Critique in the Face of the Blackmail of the Enlightenment,” Actuality and the Idea, (Princeton, NJ, May 11-12, 2012).
  • “Phenomenology as First-Order Perception: Speech, Vision, and Reflection in Merleau-Ponty,” Re-approaching the Foundations of Phenomenology (New York, NY, March 30-31, 2012).
  • “The Philosophical Life as the Practice of ‘Dying and Being Dead’: Plato’s Phaedo and the Death of Socrates,” Plato and the Experience of Philosophy (Guelph, ON, November 11-12, 2012).
  • “‘There is Still Life’: Torture, Vulnerability, and the Body,” Global Justice, the Environment, and the Economy, Canadian Society for Women in Philosophy (Victoria, BC, October 14-16, 2011) [*Winner of CSWIP’s award for the best paper by a graduate student].