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Department of Philosophy

Shannon Hayes

Senior Lecturer in Philosophy

Shannon Hayes is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University, where she specializes in Continental Philosophy, Aesthetics, and critical phenomenology. She completed her PhD at the University of Oregon in 2019 and previously served as Assistant Professor at Tennessee State University from 2019 to 2025. Her research investigates how contemporary conditions, from pandemic isolation to artificial intelligence, are generating new forms of temporal experience and collective affect that exceed traditional theoretical frameworks. Her work has been published in journals including Research in Phenomenology, Epoché, KronoScope, and Critical Horizons. She is Co-Founder and Co-Editor of Puncta: Journal of Critical Phenomenology.

Specializations

My research expertise centers on Continental Philosophy, particularly phenomenology and aesthetics, investigating how contemporary conditions, from pandemic isolation to artificial intelligence, generate new forms of temporal experience and collective affect. My teaching brings this Continental tradition into dialogue with contemporary issues, creating inclusive spaces where students engage philosophical concepts through aesthetic and interdisciplinary encounters.


Representative Publications

Peer-reviewed Articles

  • “Melancholic Rereading: Untimely Configurations in Barthes’s Late Writings” Kronoscope: Journal for the Study of Time (forthcoming, 2025)
  • “Toward a Phenomenology of ‘The Other World’: This World as It Is for No One in Particular.” Research in Phenomenology 52.3 (2022): 352-374. Hayes, CV | 2
  • “Merleau-Ponty’s Melancholy: Phantom Limbs and the Work of Involuntary Memory.” Epoché: Journal for the History of Philosophy. 24.1 (2019): 201-219.
  • “On the Historico-Poetic Materialism of Benjamin and Celan.” Critical Horizons: Journal of Philosophy and Social Theory, 19.2 (2018): 125-39.

Book Chapters

  • "Tired Nature, Tired of Nature: Eco-Phenomenology of Fatigue and Melancholy" (Co-authored with Kaja Rathe). Routledge Companion to Eco-Phenomenology, edited by Michael Heneise. (forthcoming, 2025)
  • “Can Melancholy Be Heroic? Walter Benjamin and the Vicissitudes of Melancholy.” In Faces of Depression in Literature, edited by Josefa Ros Velasco, 87-102. New York: Peter Lang, 2020.

Review Articles and Commentaries

  • Response to “Intellectual Disability and The Philosophy of John Dewey” by Justin Bell and Sarah Woolwine. Southwest Philosophy Review (forthcoming, 2025)
  • "Pain is an Event." Review of Turning Emotions Inside Out: Affective Life Beyond the Subject by Edward S. Casey. Research in Phenomenology 53.1 (2023): 105-13.
  • Response to “Quotidian Apocalypse? Tosaka Jun's Critical Theory in a New Age of Crisis." Southwestern Philosophy Review 38.2 (2022): 51-53.
  • "A Phenomenology of the Other World." Review of Unconsciousness Between Phenomenology and Psychoanalysis. Metalepsis 1.1 (2021): 161-172.
  • “Editors’ Introduction: Reflections on the First Issue.” Puncta: Journal of Critical Phenomenology, 1.1 (2018): 1-7. (Co-authored with Martina Ferrari, Devin Fitzpatrick, Sarah McLay, Kaja Jenssen Rathe, and Amie Zimmer).