This page concerns some general recommendations about the study of Latin American philosophy in PhD programs in the United States. Elsewhere, you can find some (somewhat outdated) guidance on what to read to get started on the study of Latin American philosophy.
Why do these notes presume a US focus? You can, of course, study Latin American
philosophy in various places in Latin America. However, the
structure of the global academy is such that it is difficult
to get a job in the United States (at least in philosophy)
if your PhD comes from a university in a country where the
predominant language is Spanish. So, this guide presumes an
interest in graduate programs in philosophy in the
English-dominant world, and given where Latin American
philosophy specialists tend to be located, that means we're
talking about US PhD programs in philosophy.
Topics discussed below:
What are job prospects like for people who
work in Latin American phil?
Where can I study Latin American phil?
Where should I go to school?
Other considerations
Dissertation-stage work on Latin American philosophy
What are job prospects like for people who work
in Latin American philosophy?
The bad news is that there are comparatively few
postings of jobs that are explicitly looking for someone who
works on Latin American philosophy (as opposed to, say,
ethics). But that isn't the important figure because the
overall situation is comparatively good. Over the past 10
years or so, there have been more jobs advertising an interest
in hiring someone who works in Latin American philosophy, or
with a job description friendly to Latin American philosophy,
than there are people who specialize in Latin American
philosophy. This does not include general open area jobs, or
jobs that specify "non-Western" (though I suspect that many
people would be happy to think of Latin American as
non-Western, even though that is a conceptual error). Hardly
any fields in philosophy have anything like that ratio of jobs
to candidates. (My anecdotal conviction about this was born
out by some data. Carolyn Dicey Jennings and crew
found that "Philosophy of the Americas"ŃAKA Latin American
PhilosophyŃhad the highest permanent placement rate of
any field of specialization in philosophy).
Philosophers with demonstrated ability to teach Latin American
philosophy disproportionately tend to be able to find
employment somewhere in the academic world, because
the need outstrips the supply of competent teachers.
That said, there are several things to know about
these jobs. First off, historically, very few of these jobs
have be in departments with Ph.D. programs. That's true of
nearly any subfield in philosophy, but it is more true than
usual in this case. Second, what jobs there are will
frequently be in state schools, and often in regions where the
Latina/o population is particularly large, although your
mileage may vary. Both of these things have been changing over
the past few years, but my guess is that these generalizations
will remain true for a while.
There are other upsides to studying Latin
American philosophy. If you are willing to work outside of a
philosophy department, you may have more job options than the
average philosophy jobseeker, because sometimes ethnic
studies, area studies, and comparative literature programs
will be game to hire someone who works in Latin American
philosophy. You are also likely to be in a better position to
get grants and the like from various sources because the
appetite for projects in non-canonical or underrepresented
fields tends to be larger than the supply of such projects
from philosophy. Finally, demand for Latin American philosophy
is only going to go up, so other things equal, your job
options are comparatively likely to increase over the course
of your career.
Where are Ph.D. programs with people who
work in Latin American philosophy?
At the time of writing (2023) there
are a variety of U.S. Ph.D. programs, where at least one
tenured faculty member describes themselves as working in
Latin American philosophy and teaches and/or publishes with
some regularity on these topics. They are listed below, in
institutional alphabetical order, with the relevant faculty
members with appointments in philosophy.
Note: This list doesn't include places that have faculty that
would be relevant to a dissertation committee but that aren't
in the philosophy department, nor departments where the only
specialists are untenured faculty members, nor departments
with faculty members who have retired or are unlikely to take
on advising of new graduate students, nor departments where
faculty may teach in without publishing work in Latin American
philosophy:
(If I'm overlooking a program,
please don't hesitate to let me knowŃas people move, get
tenured, and/or research interests shift, I may miss a place!)
DePaul: Elizabeth Mill‡n
Emory: Roc’o ZambranaHunter College/CUNY Grad Center: Linda Alcoff
Marquette: Grant Silva
Northwestern: Josˇ MedinaPenn State: Eduardo Mendieta, Mariana Ortega
Texas A&M: Gregory Pappas
University of California San Diego: Clinton Tolley, Manuel Vargas
University of Oregon: Alejandro Vallega
Note 1: Upon tenuring Josˇ Jorge
Mendoza, the University of Washington should be on this
list; even before Mendoza had arrived, UW had already
produced several notable Latin American philosophy
specialists.
Note 2: At Rutgers, Alex Guerrero teaches an undergraduate
course in African/Native Am/Latin American philosophy and
has published work in Native American philosophy, but
doesn't (as of the date of the last update of this page)
list himself as working in Latin American philosophy.
However, Nelson Maldonado-Torres (Comp Lit) works centrally
in contemporary Latin American philosophy. Students
interested in Rutgers for Latin American philosophy should
speak to faculty there about the viability of working on
these topics at that institution.
Note 3: Given the uptick in hiring of Latin American
philosophy specialists, and the increase in attention to the
field by a wider range of institutions, this list may change
faster than I am likely to update it. It might also be
helpful to consult the more wide-ranging list available at
the Pluralist
Guide which aggregates strength in Latina/o/x/e and
Latin American philosophy and doesn't distinguish between
tenured and untenured faculty, and active and retired
faculty. Before making any decisions about
where to go, you should verify that information from that
website or this one isn't out of date.
Recommendations by people who don't
know the details of your life and interests are always to be
taken with a grain of salt, maybe even a whole box of salt.
That said, here are some recommendations based on
considerations solely driven by what would tend to maximize a
population of average candidates' chances of getting a job at
a place with a reasonable teaching load in a geographically
and otherwise desirable part of the world. (So yes, there can
be good reasons to disregard everything I say below).
If you are facing a choice of where
to go between roughly comparable schools, but one has
someone who works in Latin American philosophy and another
doesn't, the obvious answer is that other things equal, you
should probably go to the one where there is faculty who
work on Latin American philosophy.
When comparing two or more schools with strength in Latin
American philosophy, there are a couple of things to
consider, including (1) placement rates, (2) the faculty
(their track record with placing students, their
professional visibility, whether they are professionally
active), (3) the kinds of topics that people focus on at
that institution (this will affect what topics, figures, and
styles of work you will engage with), (4) whether the
department offers graduate seminars in that area, (5) the
presence of regular reading groups in the area, and (6) the
strength of the undergraduate curriculum in Latin American
philosophy (as this will affect the kinds of TA
opportunities you will have).
If you are strongly inclined to Continental philosophy and/or
hostile to analytic philosophy, it probably doesn't make sense
to pursue Latin American philosophy at an analytically
oriented program. And vice-versa. The reason is that a good
deal of your coursework and the kind of training you get will
be oriented in a way that may not appeal to you.
That said, one should be skeptical of claims that there is
only one good way or place to study Latin American philosophy.
Current specialists in Latin American philosophy have come out
of a wide range of programs, from both Continental and
analytic-leaning departments, at many different levels of
academic gloriousness. Historically, specialists have sprouted
in a variety of unexpected places. So, a place that doesn't
look great on paper could turn out to be an okay or better
place to do work in that area, and in general, there is a
trade-off to be had between the career goodies of general
institutional fanciness and specialist strength in a field.
Still, the general point here is that there are a lot of ways
to develop an expertise in this area and no grad program does
everything or perfectly caters to anyone. Like philosophy in
general, there are a lot of places where one can get good
training and one should be skeptical of one-size-fits-all
answers to where you should study.
What follows are some thoughts about more particular
decisions.
First, some thoughts for the person open to training in an
analytic program. In the old days, I would have told someone
with inclination or toleration for analytic philosophy to go
to the best analytic program you can get into where (1) you
can pursue Latin American philosophy without being actively
hindered by the department and (2) there is a reasonable
chance that you will be able to get financial support for
studying Latin American philosophy in Latin America (e.g.,
during summers, or for a year abroad). What speaks for this
kind of recommendation is that the academy is pedigree
sensitive. However, the advent of reasonably well-ranked
analytic-oriented graduate programs with faculty who work in
Latin American philosophy has meant that the situation is
significantly different. It is now possible to study Latin
American philosophy in analytic programs with reasonably good
placement records. More curiously, some grad programs in elite
departments are admitting students with strong interests in
this area, despite not having faculty who work in the area.
These are all mostly positive developments, but they make the
landscape complicated for people considering graduate school
in this part of filosofilandia.
So, what should you do if you are
admitted to an especially strong program (analytic or
Continental) where there are no faculty with relevant
expertise, but also to less glorious programs with the
relevant expertise? There is no general piece of advice that
applies to all cases, and it partly depends on how committed
you are to specifically Latin American philosophy. The appeal
to going to a strong program without any expertise in Latin
American philosophy is that pedigree can matter inside the
academy, and outside as well (if, for example, you decide to
leave philosophy).
That said, there are obvious downsides to going to a program
that doesn't have anyone who works in Latin American
philosophy, if that's what you want to work on. You typically
won't have anyone to work with, you will likely need to write
a dissertation in another field, and you will need to be
strongly self-motivated to keep up a real area of
specialization or concentration in a field not really serviced
by your department. Moreover, there will be professional
contexts (including the job market) where your lack of
training will put you at some disadvantage with respect to
candidates who were trained in the field. After all, one goes
to grad school not just for certification, but training and
the development of actual expertise. So, going some place not
known for producing people who work in that area is its own
disadvantage.
My guess is that over the next decade or so we'll see a shift towards downgrading job candidates without formal training in this area, given that there are a variety of programs where one can get actual training in these areas. If one squints, the era of autodidacts seems to be coming to an end in this field, and that's a good thing. These are just guesses, though, and we won't have a lot of data points about how career trajectories go under different choices for a while.
For the one reader wondering: at
the time I was entering grad school in the late 14th century,
there weren't many options for studying Latin American
philosophy in a PhD program, so I applied to graduate programs
without taking it seriously as a possibility. It worked out
fine, though, in part because it was still an era of almost
entirely self-taught scholars working in Latin American
philosophy and because my graduate program was completely
tolerant of my independently pursuing a side interest in this
area. It would have been a disaster, though, if my university
didn't have the money for me to go abroad ever summer and if
they didn't tolerate my teaching classes in Latin American
philosophy. You probably wouldn't be reading this page if that
had been the case.
When deciding where to go to school, you should
look into whether the school has a Latin American Studies
program/center/major, etc.. If they do not these sorts of
academic clusters, that's a big negative. Why? Latin American Studies groups will
typically bring with them resources and opportunities that
are especially useful to grad students working in Latin
American philosophy, including visiting faculty, grant
and/or travel support, perhaps language program support, and
various other things that can make your studying Latin
American philosophy easier to do. Similarly, if one is
interested in the Caribbean branches of Latin American
philosophy, places with faculty working in Caribbean Studies
and Africana-focused faculty are likely to be a plus.
Depending on your interests, you could find that there are
terrific resources outside of philosophy to study the kinds
of things you are interested in (e.g., Romance Languages,
Religious Studies, Comparative Literature, Ethnic Studies,
Native/First Nations/Indigenous Studies). Depending on your
interests, robust enough resources in those departments
could give you reason to go to grad school in some field
other than philosophy. That said, if you are inclined to go
that path, you should recognize that it is very difficult to
get back into philosophy if you have been outside of it or
if you get your degree in some other field in the
humanities.
My general sense is that if you are hoping to rely on people
outside of philosophy to be your principal guide a project in
philosophy, this does not bode well for your disciplinary
appeal downstream because of the way prestige, pedigree, and
gate-keeping things tend to work in the profession.
How to think about
dissertation-stage work in Latin American philosophy
There are three main ways to think about what
one's dissertation-stage profile looks like for people hoping
to have a specialization in Latin American philosophy.
1. The two-headed beast: Latin American as a second
AOS (i.e., research interest) or a really strong AOC (i.e.,
teaching competence), or
2. Hybridity: do a dissertation that is both a piece
of Latin American philosophy and something more recognizable
to U.S. conceptions of philosophy (Brazilian paraconsistent
logic! History and philosophy of biology in Mexico! Metaethics
in Argentinian Positivism! German Romanticism and Latin
American Liberalism!)
3. Unconventional
Conventionalism: Write a conventional dissertation on a topic
that is centrally in Latin American philosophy, with no concern
for trying to meet more traditional job market hiring
designations.
Historically, options (1) and (2) were clearly advantageous.
However, the field and patterns of hiring have been changing
relatively dramatically over the past few years, and my guess
is that it is now considerably more viable to do option 3 than
before. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if there continue
to be job market advantages for being able to pitch one's work
to a wider rather than narrower audience. Still, the job
market is changing so it is hard to predict what things will
look like in five or more years, and it is a long time from
acceptance into a PhD program and going on the academic job
market.
Last updated: 03/31/23.