Frances Maughan-Brown

Biography

Frances Maughan-Brown is co-editor of the International Journal of Kierkegaard Research. Her book, The Lily's Tongue: Figure and Authority in Kierkegaard's Lily Discourses (SUNY Press, 2019), addresses Kierkegaard's four signed texts on Matthew 6:24-34 as a cycle, and names them the Lily Discourses. The Lily Discourses remain central to Maughan-Brown’s reading of Kierkegaard and his reception and origination of texts in the Continental tradition, particularly because of what they have to say about the "call," or the "summons," which Heidegger will later put in terms of "conscience," and which Levinas will put in terms of "love" and "justice."

Responding in part to the anti-authoritarian and anti-patriarchal thrust of Kierkegaard's writing, and the way those texts disclose the intertwining of the political and the aesthetic, Frances Maughan-Brown is working more and more with texts in Gender and Women’s Studies, Peace and Conflict Studies and the question of "community."

She has been teaching philosophy at the College of the Holy Cross since 2017. 

Editorial Positions

Co-Editor of The International Journal for Kierkegaard Research 

Publications

Books

Kierkegaard and the Poetry of the Gospel: Essays on the Lily Discourses. (Co-edited volume with Rick A. Furtak). London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2025.

The Lily’s Tongue: Figure and Authority in Kierkegaard’s Lily Discourses. Albany: SUNY Press, 2019. 

Select Essays

“Love before the Law” in Kierkegaard’s Works of Love: A Critical Guide, ed. Wojciech Kaftanski & Jeffrey Hanson, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025 (189-209).

“Anxiety of the Autodidact” in Educating Anxiety: Psychological, Philosophical, and Theological Perspectives on Teaching and Learning, edited by Mark Freeman and Peter Fritz, New York: Routledge, 2026 (52-73).

“A Maternal Abraham: Agacinski on Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard in France: A History of Reception and Influence, ed. Hjördis Becker-Lindenthal and Andrew Sackin-Poll, London: Brill, 2025 (319-342).

“The Remains: Let it Be Lily” in Kierkegaard and the Poetry of the Gospel: Essays on the Lily Discourses, ed. Frances Maughan-Brown and Rick Furtak, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2025 (3-25).

“The Secrecy of Possibility in Kierkegaard’s ‘Pattern,’” in Kierkegaard and Possibility, ed. Erin Plunkett, Bloomsbury Press, 2023 (78-98).

“Kissing the Image: an Allegory of Imagination in ‘The Seducer’s Diary’” in History of European Ideas, Routledge, 2021, 47 (3): 528-542.

“Without Authority: Kierkegaard’s Resistance to Patriarchy,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook. New York: de Gruyter, 2021, 26 (1): 301-323.

“Imagination,” in Kierkegaard’s Concepts, Volume 15, Tome III, of Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources Series, ed. Steven Emmanuel, William McDonald and Jon Stewart, Burlington: Ashgate, 2014 (195-202).

“Metaphor,” in Kierkegaard’s Concepts, Volume 15, Tome IV, of Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources Series, ed. Steven Emmanuel, William McDonald and Jon Stewart, Burlington: Ashgate, 2014 (216-225).

“Job’s Suffering,” in Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 2011 (365-383).

Co-Authored Essays

“Kneading Margarine: Social Comparison and Feminist Testimony” coauthored with Lily Jaramillo, in Philosophia, 2026. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-026-01025-w

“Cura Anxietati: Jesuit Education as Holding Environment” co-authored with Mark Freeman and Peter Fritz, in Jesuit Educational Quarterly, 2nd ser., 2, no. 1 (2026): 67–86.