Capen Lectures: Crista Mercer
7/6/21

Our students have opportunites to meet distinguished speakers, such as Christia Mercer, Professor, Columbia University. In Fall 2016, Mercer delivered the annual three-part lecture series hosted by Jorge Gracia. You can access Mercer's lectures on this website. Learn more.

Carlos Estévez: Bottles to the Sea
3/25/16

The book serves as a source for the exploration of many dimensions of the human experience in relation to other beings, ranging from machines and blueprints to mollusks and plants.

Fall 2016 Lecture Series: Philosophy and Its History
7/29/19

Jorge Gracia hosts distinguished speakers, including Carlos Sanchez, Barry Smith, Robert Gooding Williams, Thomas D. Sullivan and Russell Pannier.

A Collection of Individuals: The Philosophical Legacy of Jorge J. E. Gracia
1/16/21

Orgnized by Jonathan J. Sanford and William Irwin, the Fall 2019 Capen Chair Conference, brought together fifteen distinguished speakers, UB Alums, each of whom wrote their dissertation under the supervision of Professor Jorge J. E. Gracia. Learn more.

Capen Lectures
4/13/22

Fall 2017, Jorge Gracia welcomes José Medina, whose latest book, The Epistemology of Resistance: Gender and Racial Oppression, Epistemic Injustice, and Resistant Imagination, received the 2012 North-American Society for Social Philosophy Book Award.

Debating Race, Ethnicity, and Latino Identity
2/7/18

Jorge J. E. Gracia and His Critics — The debate, on the nature of race and ethnicity in relation to nationality, linguistic rights, and Affirmative Action, opens new paths of inquiry.

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Department of Philosophy
Department of Comparative Literature
  • The Philosophical Legacy of Jorge J. E. Gracia
    10/31/24
    About the book: Fleeing Cuba in 1961, Jorge J. E. Gracia arrived in the USA at the age of nineteen without family and unable to speak English. Ten years later he was assistant professor of philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Over the next 50 years Gracia published dozens of books and hundreds of articles, making major contributions to numerous areas of philosophy: Latin American philosophy, race and ethnicity, Medieval philosophy, philosophical historiography, metaphysics and ontology, and theory of interpretation. This book is a critical response to Gracia’s work and a tribute to his legacy. It includes a comprehensive bibliography of Gracia’s philosophical works. Learn more.

Race and Ethnicity

Hispanics/Latinos

The topics related to race and ethnicity include philosophy, art, and literature. The foci are the philosophy of race, ethnicity, nationality, and the particular issues that come up in the context of Hispanics/Latinos in the United States and Latin America.

Publications>

Art and Literature

Interpretation

A particularly significant topic for the Capen Chair within art and literature is interpretation, that is, the understanding of art through literature, and vice versa, and their implications for the philosophy of race, ethnicity, and Hispanic/Latino identity.

Art Exhibitions>

Art Exhibition

Visions and Imagination: Cuban American and Argentinian Art.

On January 31, 2019, the Binghamton University Art Museum opened the exhibition, Visions and Imagination: Cuban American and Argentinian Art. Many pieces in this collection were donated by Jorge and Norma Gracia, each of whom spoke to the audience about some of the works they permanently gifted to the museum. Learn more.

2020 Publication

Cuba Before Castro: A Century of Family Memoirs by Jorge J. E. Gracia

 In this partly biographical and partly philosophical work, Jorge Gracia, who is the current Samuel P. Capen Chair and SUNY Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Comparative Literature University at Buffalo, provides us with an autobiographical account of his youth in Cuba prior and right after the Cuban Revolution. His is an unmatching riveting and revealing account of his life that can explain his love with philosophy, history and Hispanic/Latino culture in general. Gracia applies his personal experiences to shed light on the emerging field of Latin American philosophy broadly construed in the USA. I do not know of any other living philosopher who has contributed as much and who has helped as many young philosophers in the said field. With his broad background in the history of philosophy, especially Medieval and Latin American philosophy, Gracia has given us an exemplary account of how relevant philosophy could be for exploring challenging issues related to culture, ethnicity, and race. In sum, I think that unquestionably Jorge Gracia can be considered the living dean of Latin American philosophy in North America. -- Vicente Medina, professor of philosophy, Seton Hall University. The book is available on Amazon.