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Campus mourns Maria Lugones, professor of comparative literature and Latin American and Caribbean Area studies

Maria Lugones, 76, professor of comparative literature and Latin American and Caribbean Area Studies (LACAS), died Tuesday, July 14. From Argentina, she came to the United States in the 1960s, earning her bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Los Angeles and her master’s degree and doctoral degree in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

She joined the faculty at 91���� in 1993, brought in to to direct, invigorate and strengthen LACAS. In that role, she built a vibrant program.

Central to her political and intellectual work was building coalitions among women of color, coalition building and grassroots work as a popular educator outside of the academy.

As an activist/scholar, she followed the maxim, “I won’t think what I won’t practice.” She was one of the co-founders of the popular education collective “La Escuela Popular Norteña,” based in Valdes, N.Mex. She authored several path-breaking texts on women-of-color coalition building, radical multiculturalism and coloniality and gender. She was the author of several books and many articles, including the highly praised and cited book, “Pilgrimage/Peregrinajes: Theorizing Coalition Against Multiple Oppressions” (2003).

Among her many honors, she was named Distinguished Woman Philosopher for 2016 by the Society for Women in Philosophy, and she was awarded the 2020 Frantz Fanon Lifetime Achievement Award from the Caribbean Philosophical Association in recognition of her works “in or of special interest to Caribbean thought.” The honor was awarded to Lugones for “her groundbreaking contributions to decolonial philosophy/theory; feminist philosophy/theory; Indigenous philosophy/theory; critical gender, race and sexuality studies; Latin American philosophy; and world systems theory.”