Biography
Emma Velez (she/they) is a Chicanx Okie, decolonial feminist, philosopher, and storyteller. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Gender & Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois. Dr. Velez is interested in the role that our social imaginaries play both in shaping and reimagining our ethical commitments, geopolitical responses to racialized and gendered colonial violence, as well as the politics of knowledge production. Centering the philosophical genealogies and lived experiences of Black, Indigenous, and Latinx communities, their scholarship is rooted in storytelling and speculative theorizing and bridges conversations in philosophy, ethnic studies, and feminist theory. She is currently working on a book project titled, Orienting Historias for a Decolonial Latinx Feminism.
Dr. Velez is on research leave for the Fall 2024 semester.
Education
2020 Ph.D. in Philosophy & Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Penn State University
2015 M.A. in Philosophy, SUNY Stony Brook
2013 B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science, Oklahoma City University
Awards and Honors
2022-2023 Humanities Research Institute Campus Faculty Fellow, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
2020 LAS Impact Award, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Courses Taught
GWS 100: Intro to GWS
GWS/LLS 496: Latinx Feminisms
GWS 498: Senior Seminar
GWS 550: Feminist Theory & Methods (grad seminar)
Additional Campus Affiliations
Latina/Latino Studies
Center for Caribbean & Latin American Studies
Unit for Criticism & Interpretative Theory
Highlighted Publications
(2024) “The Colonial Contract and the Coloniality of Gender: Decolonial Feminist Reflections on Charles Mills’s Racia-Sexual Contract,” Critical Philosophy of Race. https://doi.org/10.5325/critphilrace.12.2.0366
(2024) co-authored with Lori Gallegos, “Self-Creation in Chicana Feminisms” in The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Existentialism, eds. Kevin Aho, Megan Altman and Hans Pedersen. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003247791
(2022) “Latina/o/x Feminist Philosophers” in Oxford Bibliographies in Latino Studies, edited by Ilan Stavans. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/obo/9780199913701-0270
(2020). Toward a “Care-ful Geopolitics” of La Frontera in the Era of Trump. Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 34(3), 339-352. https://doi.org/10.5325/jspecphil.34.3.0339
(2019). Decolonial feminism at the intersection: A critical reflection on the relationship between decolonial feminism and intersectionality. Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 33(3), 390-406. https://doi.org/10.5325/jspecphil.33.3.0390
Co-Edited Special Issues:
(2020). Editors’ Introduction, Toward Decolonial Feminisms: Tracing the Lineages of Decolonial Thinking through Latin American/Latinx Feminist Philosophy. Hypatia, 35(3), 366-372. https://doi.org/10.1017/hyp.2020.26
(2020). Editors' introduction: Tango dancing with María Lugones. Critical Philosophy of Race, 8(1-2), 1-24. https://doi.org/10.5325/critphilrace.8.1–2.0001