The Spire

Gianna Micieli ‘30

Staff Writer

1. Professor Name: Frances Maughan-Brown

2. Academic Department: Montserrat and Philosophy 

3. Classes you teach: Søren Kierkegaard, Montserrat: Receiving the Self, and other philosophy classes, such as Existentialism, Feminism,  and Philosophy of Art 

4. Preferred music platform: CDs. Her new car doesn’t have a CD player, which feels like a “total disaster.”

5. What is your go to playlist? Listening to an album in whole, as that makes a difference to experience the progression from beginning to end. There is an emotional thread that keeps going when listening to a whole album. For instance, in “Planet Waves” by Bob Dylan (1974), there are two different versions of the same song, (“Forever Young”) one after the other. The entire album has an arc that can be experienced when listening to it in one sitting. 

6. What’s your current favorite song? Picking just one favorite song was challenging for Professor Maughan-Brown, as it is for many. She shared how the song she has recently been playing the most is Bob Dylan’s “Series of Dreams,” in which the percussion has a driving rhythm that plays an increasing momentum. She shared that playing the song back again can feel as if it becomes a series of dreams, especially when listening to it while traveling. She specifically recalled listening to it on the runway in a plane landing in Japan, in a train crossing scarlet bridges over green ravines, and in an underground Tokyo mall.  Hearing the drumming of  the song while observing the scenery was surreal for her. 

7. What was your favorite artist while in college?:  When trying to answer this question, Professor Maughan-Brown felt as though she was a broken record: she shared again about her love of Bob Dylan, as well as listening to a “bunch of Joan Armatrading” (then it was “Show Some Emotion” – now it is “Weakness in Me”) while also “dancing to Miriam Makeba after dinner.” 

8. Do you think your music taste has evolved with time? She shares how she keeps coming back to one: Bob Dylan. Dylan keeps making new music, giving fans a chance to continually see him in concert in “different, newly extraordinary” ways. And she still loves other old favorites too – Nina Simone (say, “I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl”) and Ella Fitzgerald (for instance, “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered”). 

9. What song has the most emotional value for you? This was a very tough question for Professor Maughan-Brown to answer, as emotion is tied so deeply to music in so many ways. “If songs don’t have emotional value, there’s not very much left.” We shared sentiments on how listening to music becomes a very passive experience if there is no emotional connection. She also shared her love for “More Than One Kind of Love” by Joan Armatrading.

10. What’s a modern-pop song you like? Scot Bradley’s Post Modern Jukebox version of “Hey Ya,” sung by Sara Niemietz. 

11. Have any specific songs had an impact on your professional career? Professor Maughan-Brown explained how she quite frequently combines analysis of songs with scholarly papers that she is writing. For example, she touched upon a new essay she’s working on, on Fichte and Kierkegaard, and the connection to Bob Dylan’s “No Time to Think” from the 1978 album “Street Legal.” There is a “working conversation” between music and her professional career, as it turns out that what is going on in texts is “said, shown, and demonstrated beautifully in song.” She shares how Dylan’s song is a “narrative or adventure that keeps getting interrupted by strings of abstract nouns,” showing that there is always time to think! Time irrupts between the action and passivity of thought itself. Furthermore, as a student in professor Maughan-Brown’s Montserrat course “Receiving The Self,” I have been able to experience how Professor Maughan-Brown teaches with music. In one of her first classes we got the chance to analyze “I Believe in You” (from Dylan’s 1979 album “Slow Train Coming”), and connect it to works that we read and will read throughout the semester. 

12. Are there any songs you like that are connected to your academic field? In addition to the ones listed above, the song titled “Is Your Love in Vain?”  (also from Street Legal) focuses on the idea of risking it all, which connects to a lot of what Professor Maughan-Brown works on. She writes about the intersection of the practice of ideas, politics, life, in connection and juxtaposition with the aesthetic, the image, the surface, which the songs make beautiful. 

13. If you could listen to one song for the rest of your life, what would it be? Professor Maughan-Brown laughed while reflecting on this question, as she feels it encapsulates the same ideas as “What is your favorite song” or “What are you listening to right now?” She shares how she doesn’t know if she could listen to one song for the rest of her life but “so long as it’s not uninterrupted, or not exclusive,” she’ll return to Dylan’s “Born in Time” always, the folk song “The Water is Wide,” and Lucinda Williams’ “Fruits of My Labor.”

14. Do you view music as a relaxation device? If not, what other forms of relaxation do you utilize? Yes, sometimes music can be relaxing, but in general if “you’re not relaxed already, music can’t do much.” She shares how she doesn’t only use it to relax, but instead also uses it to think, and further her engagement with other texts. For another form of relaxation, Professor Maughan-Brown shares her love of gardening and connecting with nature.  

Copy Edited by Lauren Zerella ‘29 9/15/26

Courtesy of College of the Holy Cross