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Emma Velez

Assistant Professor

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 Philosophy33(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