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About
Fall Open House
Join us for one of our Fall Open Houses and experience our beautiful, riverfront campus firsthand. Learn more about Marist’s academic experience, the admissions process, and get an inside look at life as a Red Fox! You'll have the opportunity to hear directly from students, faculty, and staff about what makes the Marist Community so special. Register Below:
About
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Academics
Fall Open House
Join us for one of our Fall Open Houses and experience our beautiful, riverfront campus firsthand. Learn more about Marist’s academic experience, the admissions process, and get an inside look at life as a Red Fox! You'll have the opportunity to hear directly from students, faculty, and staff about what makes the Marist Community so special. Register Below:
Academics
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Admission & Financial Aid
Fall Open House
Join us for one of our Fall Open Houses and experience our beautiful, riverfront campus firsthand. Learn more about Marist’s academic experience, the admissions process, and get an inside look at life as a Red Fox! You'll have the opportunity to hear directly from students, faculty, and staff about what makes the Marist Community so special. Register Below:
Admission & Financial Aid
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Student Life
Fall Open House
Join us for one of our Fall Open Houses and experience our beautiful, riverfront campus firsthand. Learn more about Marist’s academic experience, the admissions process, and get an inside look at life as a Red Fox! You'll have the opportunity to hear directly from students, faculty, and staff about what makes the Marist Community so special. Register Below:
Student Life
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Dr. Alessandro Moscarítolo Palacio
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Bio
Professor Moscarítolo Palacio is a seasoned and passionate teacher who is convinced that pursuing excellence as an educator is a prerequisite for achieving excellence as a scholar. As someone born and raised in a collectivistic global South society, moreover, Professor Moscarítolo Palacio views a successful class as a joint endeavor in which the leading voice is the sum total of everybody’s voices. Relatedly, as someone educated in a pluralistic and multicultural milieu, Professor Moscaritolo Palacio is unflaggingly committed to intellectual pluralism: he is eager to show his students, in practice, that we can get nearer the truth by looking at the relevant phenomena from multiple perspectives—including perspectices which some of us may find foreign.
Professor Moscarítolo Palacio specializes in global philosophies, with an emphasis on Latin American and Latine philosophy, Indigenous philosophies of the Americas, Africana Philosophy, and contemporary Anglo-American philosophy. In these fields, he is particularly interested in exploring topics pertaining to environmental ethics, metaphilosophy (the philosophy of philosophy), race and ethnicity, and the philosophy of education. He also has interests in the philosophy of science, applied ethics, the philosophy of gender and sexuality, the philosophy of law, and the philosophy of art.
As a scholar and teacher eager to foreground the relevance of philosophy (and the humanities more generally) today, Professor Moscarítolo Palacio has spearheaded multiple public philosophy endeavors; he is particularly proud of his efforts to build bridges across seemingly intractable political, religious, or ideologological differences. He is equally interested in bringing global South cultures into dialogue with American and European culture.
Professor Moscarítolo Palacio and his husband are the proud parents of Mona Estefanía, a regal yet affectionate Russian Blue cat. While Professor Moscarítolo Palacio and his husband are unflinching vegans, Her Majesty is—and will always be—an unflinching carnivore. They live in harmony, despite their ideological differences!
Education
PhD, Philosophy, University of Illinois, 2021
MA, Philosophy, University of Illinois, 2016
MA, Logic and Philosophy of Science, Universidad Central de Venezuela, 2011
BA, Philosophy, Universidad Central de Venezuela, 2008
Research Interests / Areas of Focus
Global Philosophies, with an emphasis on Latin American and Latine Philosophy, Indigenous Philosophies of the Americas, and Africana Philosophy; Environmental Philosophy; Philosophy of Education; Public Philosophy; History of Contemporary Philosophy.
Selected Publications
"A Constructive Engagement between Oxford Ordinary Language Philosophy and Latin American and Latine Liberatory Philosophy". Comparative Philosophy, Volume 16 No. 2, August 2025.
"Gangster Philosophers and Actual Philosophers. Some Introductory Notes on the Function of Academic Philosophy in Everyday Life". Everyday Lifestyles, American Philosophical Association, October 2025.
"When Conversation Goes Wrong: Managing Student Errors" in Brynn Welch (editor), The Art of Teaching Philosophy: Reflective Values and Concrete Practices. Bloomsbury Academic Publishing, 2024.
"Forging a New Relationship with Nature: Lessons from the Indigenous Philosophies of Abya Yala (the Americas)". Public Philosophy Journal, Vol. 5, no. 2, September 2023
Selected Presentations
"Environmental Philosophies of Some Main Indigeneous Peoples of South America". 2026 American Philosophical Association Eastern Division Meeting. Baltimore (MA), January 2026.
"Dare to Think. Some Remarks on the Public Function of Philosophy". Public Philosophy Initiative. Lynchburg (VA), February 2025.
"Pedagogical Hierarchies and Global South Philosophies of Liberation." Power 2025 Conference: Hierarchy, Action, and Power in Question. University of Virginia (Charlottesville), January 2025.
"Decolonizing the Philosophical Canon: Global South Philosophies." World Philosophy Day Panel, Department of Comparative Philosophy (Randolph College). Lynchburg (VA), November 2024.
"Resilience and Flourishing: Native American Philosophy and Global South Lived Experience." Life More Abundant Conference, Randolph College. Lynchburg (VA), September 2024.
"The Ontological Roots of Nahuatl Environmental Philosophy." Association of Nahuatl Scholars Meeting. Brown University, Providence (RI), April 2023
"Some Effective Strategies for Teaching a TBL (Team-Based Learning) Course on Indigenous Philosophies of the Americas". American Association of Philosophy Teachers’ Panel on Teaching Innovation at the 2023 American Philosophical Association Pacific Division Meeting. San Francisco (CA), April 2023
"New Resources for Teaching Philosophy." Panel of the Association for the Philosophy of Education at the 2023 American Philosophical Association Pacific Division Meeting. San Francisco (CA), April 2023.
"Managing Student Errors in Student-Centered Classes". 2022 International Workshop-Conference on Teaching Philosophy, American Association of Philosophy Teachers. Otterbein University (Westerville, OH), July 2022.
"Forging a New Relationship with Nature: Lessons from the Indigenous Philosophy of Abya Yala-the Americas". Philosophy in the Wild: Second Annual Conference on Environmental Philosophy. Penn State University, June 2022.
"A Tale from the Oxford of Yore". 2021 Conference of the Society for the Study of the History of Analytic Philosophy. Shanxi University (Shanxi, China), July 2022.
Awards and Honors
- Teaching Award, Philosophy Department, University of Illinois Chicago
- President’s Research in Diversity Award, University of Illinois System
- Provost Graduate Research Award, University of Illinois Chicago
- A.W. Mellon Technology-Enhanced Learning Fellowship
- American Association of Philosophy Teachers Scholarship
- Chicago Consular Corps Award
- A-1 Researcher in the Humanities. Observatorio Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología, Ministry of Science and Technology, Venezuela.
- Federico Riu International Award for Philosophy (honorable mention). Agencia Española para la Cooperación al Desarollo, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Spain
- Chancellor’s Award for Outstanding Academic Achievement, Universidad Central de Venezuela