Influenced by Auguste Comte, Henri Bergson, and Francisco Romero, she addressed questions related to individual experience and its assimilation or transcendence.
[2] Harris taught briefly at the University of Colorado (1921–22), but the bulk of her academic career was spent at Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Virginia (1922–58), where she rose to be a full professor and chair of the Philosophy Department.
[1] A major theme of her writing is the role of philosophy in illuminating what is significant in an individual life, and here she shows the influence of Bergson's conception of 'life' as well as John Dewey's pragmatism.
[2] The title of one of her books, Sub Specie Aeternitatis (1937, 'from the perspective of eternity'), makes visible her concern to connect what is (or may be) universally true with the individual experiences that fall within our often narrow perceptions.
[2] One of her lines of argument holds that a satisfactory life requires a certain degree of detachment as well as the ability to resist trying to organize all experience through rigid and predetermined categories.