ENN New Voices podcast: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

Welcome to the first episode of New Voices in Philosophy. In this episode, Haley Brennan talks with Sergio Gallegos Ordorica, an assistant professor at John Jay College, about the Mexican philosopher Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. We talk about how Sergio became interested in studying Sor Juana as a philosopher, how that study can be complicated by a background in analytic philosophy, some of Sor Juana’s views on love, shame, and the self, and how her identity as a Mexican women shaped her philosophy, including her views on how philosophy can be done absent institutional structures. 

Marya Jureidini provided research for this episode. To listent to this episode, please visit our podcast page.
 
Thank you for listening! 

Texts Mentioned/Referred to in the Episode

Works by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

• Amor es mas laberinto (Love is a Labyrinth) 
• Primero sueño (First Dream) 
• Respuesta a sor Filotea de la Cruz (Response to Sister Fioltea)
• Los empeños de una casa (The House of Trials) 

• Sátira filosófica (Philosophical Satire) 
• Romance 48 (‘To the Gentleman in Peru’) 

 
English Translations

• Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. The Answer/La Respueta. Translated by Electa Arenal and Amanda Powell. New York: The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2009. 
• —. Poems, Protest, and a Dream: Selected Writings. Translated by Margaret Sayers Peden. New York: Penguin Books, 1997.
• —. The House of Trials: A Translation of Los Empenos De Una Casa by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Translated by David Pasto. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1745. 

• “Philosophical Satire”. Web Translation by David Fyre. 

 
 [we highlight in bold some secondary sources that are a good place to start further research]
Other Works Discussed and Mentioned  

• Hermila Galindo: Congreso Feminista de Yucatán Mérida, Mexico. El Primer Congreo Feminista De Yucatán: anales de esa memorable asamblea. Mérida, Yucatán, México: Ateneo Peninsular, 1916. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100342848
• Podcast Reading of the piece in Spanish: https://www.historiografiamexicana.com/52-hermila-galindo-•-la-mujer-en-el-porvenir-•-congreso-feminista-1916/  Right now, there exists no English translation of this piece, but Sergio is currently working on a translation of it which will be included in a forthcoming anthology of 20th c Mexican philosophy, edited by Carlos Sanchez and Robert Sanchez for the Oxford New Histories of Philosophy series (edited by Christia Mercer and Melvin Rogers). This bibliography will be updated when the translation is available. 
• Antonia Rubio de Rueba. Logica Mexicana. Latin, 1605. 
• Sergio Armando Gallegos-Ordorica. “Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz on Self-Control.” Philosophy Compass 15 (2020): 1-10. 
• Michel de Montaigne. Essays. 1877. Translated by Charles Cotton: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3600/3600-h/3600-h.htm
• René Descartes. Meditations on First Philosophy. 1641. 
• Martha Nussbaum. Hiding From Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. 

 
Further Reading

• Octavio Paz. Sor Juana: Her Life and Work. Translated by Margaret Sayers Peden. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988. 
• Virginia Aspe. Approaches to the Theory of Freedom in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Querétaro: Aliosventos Ediciones, 2018. 
• Rachel O’Donnell. “Gender, Culture, and Knowledge in New Spain: Sor Juana’s ‘to the Gentleman in Peru’. Women’s Studies 44 (2015): 1114-1129. 
• Laura Benítez. “Sensibility and Understanding in the Epistemological Thought of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.” In Feminist History of Philosophy: The Recovery and Evaluation of Women’s Philosophical Thought, edited by Eileen O’Neil and Marcy Lascano, 97-128. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2019. 
• M L Femenías. “Philosophical Genealogies and Feminism in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. In The Role of History in Latin American Philosophy, edited by Arleen Salles and Elizabeth Millán, 131-160. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2005.
• Anna More. “Sor Juana’s Appetite: Body, Mind, and Vitality in ‘First Dream’.” In The Cultural Politics of Blood, 1500-1900, edited by Kimberly Anne Coles, Ralph Bauer, Zita Nunes, and Carla L. Peterson, 127-145. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2014. 
• Routledge Research Companion to the Works of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Edited by Emilie L. Bergmann and Stacey Schlau. London: Routledge, 2017. 
• Mary Christine Morkowsky. “Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz”. In A History of Women Philosophers (1600-1900), edited by Mary Ellen Waithe (4 vols.), vol. 3, 59. London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991.