OUR STORY
The LATINA/X Feminisms Roundtable (formerly The Roundtable on Latina Feminism) is a Latina/x space dedicated to the discussion of all issues related to Latina/x and Latin American Feminisms. We welcome Latinas/x and their allies to engage in critical, creative, and supportive discussions. Too many academic conferences are based on a model which prioritizes competitive, agonistic discussions. We wish to make room for alternative encuentros in which we share ideas, forge connections and learn from one another. Our first meeting was in 2006.
“I cannot overemphasize how important I consider these gatherings to be, and how important I consider the yearly format that has been developing. I have long and continuously been engaged with U.S. Latina scholars in other formats and venues (professional organizations in various disciplines), many of them centering the feminist, queer, U.S. woman of color perspective. Nothing has quite emerged in that centers cross- or comparative Latina research in a fashion quite as interdisciplinary and national, thus allowing for both a measurement of the state of the art, a kind of “Aha, here we are! and in so doing, simultaneously allowing for an important intellectual leap at individual and collective levels."
Laura E. Pérez, University of California, Berkeley
MARIANA ORTEGA
Founder and Director
Mariana Ortega is Professor of Philosophy and Women's, Gender, and Sexualities Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego. Her main areas of research and interest are Latina/x Feminisms, Woman of Color Feminisms, 20th Continental Philosophy, specifically Heideggerian Phenomenology, Philosophy of Race, Latin American Feminism, and Aesthetics. Her research focuses on questions of self and sociality, the question of identity, and visual representations of race. She has published articles in journals such as Hypatia, International Journal of Philosophical Studies, International Philosophical Quarterly, Radical Philosophy Review, Critical Philosophy of Race and Contemporary Aesthetics.
She is co-editor with Linda Martín-Alcoff of the anthology Constructing the Nation: A Race and Nationalism Reader (SUNY, 2009). In her monograph, In-Between: Latina Feminist Phenomenology, Multiplicity, and the Self (SUNY, 2016), she introduces the notion of multiplicitous, in-between selves in light of existential phenomenology and Latina feminisms.
Mariana Ortega is a committed teacher who has been awarded the Lucrezia Culicchia Award for Teaching excellence and has been recognized as one of Ohio’s outstanding teachers. She is also involved with various initiatives that promote education for members of marginalized groups. More specifically, she is a member of the board of Philosophy in an Inclusive Key, an initiative designed to help students from underrepresented groups study philosophy at the graduate level. She is the founder and director of the Roundtable on Latina/x Feminisms, a forum dedicated to discussions of Latina/x and Latin American feminisms.