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's research and teaching is focused on 20th-Century Continental Philosophy (especially Phenomenology and Existentialism), Social and Political Philosophy, and Feminist Philosophy. Her current research project draws on resources from the phenomenological tradition, broadly construed, to study the nature of democratic transformation. Professor McMahon is also a Department Member in Women's & Gender Studies. She is the former President of the Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy (CSCP) and the former Secretary-Treasurer of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP). 

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].