image of Mariana Ortega

Mariana Ortega

As part of the 22nd annual Women’s and Gender Studies Symposium, Mariana Ortega will present “Bodies of Color, Bodies of Sorrow, and Resistant Melancholia” at 1 p.m. Friday, April 14, in the Old Main Room of the Bone Student Center. Ortega is a professor of philosophy at John Carroll University, with areas of research in 20th century continental philosophy, women of color feminisms, and philosophy of race.

Ortega’s 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 HypatiaInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies, International Philosophical Quarterly, Radical Philosophy Review, and Critical Philosophy of Race. In her monograph, In-Between: Latina Feminist Phenomenology, Multiplicity, and the Self, she introduces the notion of multiplicitous selfhood in light of Latina feminisms. She is the founder and director of the Latina Feminism Roundtable, a forum dedicated to discussions of Latina and Latin American feminisms.

The talk is part of the Illinois State University Speaker Series. The series seeks to bring innovative and enlightening speakers to the campus with the aim of providing the community with a platform to foster dialogue, cultivate enriching ideas, and continue an appreciation of learning as an active and lifelong process. All talks are free and open to the public.