Ofelia Schutte is Professor Emerita of Philosophy at the University of South Florida (USF). Born in Havana, Cuba, she emigrated with her parents to the United States as a young teen. She received a Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale in 1978 and has taught at the University of Florida, Gainesville, and USF in Tampa. She is the author of Beyond Nihilism: Nietzsche without Masks (1984), Cultural Identity and Social Liberation in Latin American Thought (1993), and numerous articles on feminist theory, Latin American thought, and continental philosophy. Of these, among the best remembered are “Cultural Alterity: Cross-Cultural Communication and Feminist Thought in North-South Dialogue” (1998), “Negotiating Latina Identities” (2000), “Continental Philosophy and Postcolonial Subjects” (2000), and “Dependency Work, Women, and the Global Economy” (2002).
Professor Schutte is coeditor, with Susana Nuccetelli and Otávio Bueno, of A Companion to Latin American Philosophy (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). She was a Fulbright Senior Research Fellow at UNAM, Mexico City (1985) and served as Associate Editor of Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy (1990-2006), among many other professional appointments and distinctions. Her service in APA national committees included Hispanics/Latinos in the Profession (which she also chaired for one term), International Cooperation, and Inclusiveness. Recent professional memberships include the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), the American Philosophical Association (APA), the Feminist Ethics and Social Theory Association (FEAST), the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP), and the Retired Faculty of the University of Florida (RFUF).
Her current research interests include feminism in Cuba, decolonial theory, and Latina/Latin American feminism (downsized for retirement).
Recent publications include: “Crossroads and In-Between Spaces: A Meditation on Anzaldúa and Beyond,” in Theories of the Flesh: Latina and Latin American Feminisms, Transformation, and Resistance, ed. Andrea Pitts, Mariana Ortega, and José Medina (Oxford UP, 2020); “Border Zones, In-Between Spaces, and Turns: On Lugones, the Coloniality of Gender, and the Diasporic Peregrina,” Critical Philosophy of Race 8:1-2, 2020 (Special Issue guest edited by Nancy Tuana and Emma Velez); and “De la colonialidad del poder al feminismo decolonial en América Latina” [From the coloniality of power to decolonial feminism in Latin America], in Sujeto, descolonización, transmodernidad. Debates filosóficos latinoamericanos, ed. Mabel Moraña (Madrid / Frankfurt: 2018).
Her publications for the Journal include:
“Palabras In Memory Of Jorge Gracia” (Volume 13, Issue 2)