Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, University of Buenos Aires

Faculty of Philosophy and Letters
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras
TypeFaculty
Established1896; 128 years ago (1896)
AffiliationUniversity of Buenos Aires
DeanRicardo Manetti
Students15,289 (2011)[1]
Address
Puán 480
,
Buenos Aires
,
Argentina

34°22′27″S 58°15′53″W / 34.3742°S 58.2648°W / -34.3742; -58.2648
Websitefilo.uba.ar

The Faculty of Philosophy and Letters (Spanish: Facultad de Filosofía y Letras; FFyL), also known as Filo, is a faculty of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). The faculty was founded in 1896, making it one of the oldest faculties at the university. It offers graduate degrees in multiple subjects including philosophy, literature, anthropology, history, arts, education, geography, modern and classical languages, and literary editing, as well as post-graduate degrees at the magister, doctoral, and post-doctoral level.

History

The UBA Superior Council mandated the creation of a faculty of philosophy and letters on 3 March 1888, but the corresponding presidential decree was only released twelve years later, on 13 February 1896, by issue of President José Evaristo Uriburu. In that same decree, Uriburu appointed Bartolomé Mitre, Bernardo de Irigoyen, Carlos Pellegrini, Rafael Obligado, Paul Groussac, Ricardo Gutiérrez, Lorenzo Anadón and Joaquín V. González as the faculty's new authorities.[2]

Despite being one of the oldest faculties, FFyL has historically been relegated infrastructure-wise. It originally had its seat on the rectorship building, on Viamonte 430—originally the private residence of engineer Emilio Agrelo, built in 1891. It wasn't until 1962 that the faculty was granted a seat of its own, a building on Avenida Independencia 3065, in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Balvanera. The building had originally been built as a nursing home by the Dominican Order. Following the creation of the faculties of Psychology and of Social Sciences, both as splinters from FFyL, the faculty was relocated to a building on Puán 480, in Caballito. The building formerly housed the Nobleza Piccardo tobacco factory. Said building remains the faculty's seat to this day.[3]

Degrees

In addition, FFyL offers professorship degrees on arts, anthropology, education sciences, philosophy, geography, history, and letters.[4] Moreover, the faculty offers a number of specialization degrees, as well as magister degrees, doctorates and post-doctoral degrees.[5]

Research institutes and dependencies

FFyL dependencies
FFyL seat at 25 de Mayo St. (left) and Juan B. Ambrosetti Museum of Ethnography (right).

The Faculty of Economic Sciences counts with up to twenty-two research institutes covering diverse fields, such as the Instituto de Historia Argentina y Americana "Dr. Emilio Ravignani", one of the most renown and prestigious institutes of American and Argentine history.[6][7] There are FFyL-affiliated institutes studying archaeology, anthropology, education sciences, philosophy and philology, linguistics, art history and theory, ancient history, Eastern history, Argentine, Spanish and Latin American literature, among others. Most of these institutes have their seat at the 25 de Mayo building, which previously housed the Palace Hotel.[8]

In addition, FFyL also oversees the Juan B. Ambrosetti Museum of Ethnography, one of the university's 16 museums. It was declared a site of interest in the City of Buenos Aires by the City Legislature.[9]

Political and institutional life

Like the rest of the University of Buenos Aires's faculties, FFyL operates under the principle of tripartite co-governance, wherein authorities are democratically elected and professors, students and graduates are represented in the faculty's governing bodies. The faculty is headed by a Dean (Spanish: decano or decana), who presides over the Directive Council (Consejo Directivo). The Directive Council is made up of eight representatives for the professors, four representatives of the student body, and four representatives of the faculty's graduates. Deans are elected by the Directive Council every four years, while elections to the council take place every two years.[10]

Since 2022, the dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters has been Ricardo Manetti, with Graciela Morgade as vice dean.[11]

Notable people

The Faculty of Philosophy and Letters has produced a number of important thinkers and researchers in the fields of social science and philosophy. Social anthropologist Esther Hermitte, credited with introducing structural-functionalist anthropology in Argentina, was a FFyL alumna, as was post-marxist theorist Ernesto Laclau.[12] Sociologist and political activist Pilar Calveiro began her studies at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, before the creation of the Faculty of Social Sciences in 1988.[13] In 2008, Estela Beatriz Cols, pedagogue, researcher, and educator, received her Ph.D. in Education from this faculty.[14]

Several renown writers and artists have also been educated at FFyL, including novelist and short story writer Julio Cortázar, one of the founders of the Latin American Boom. Cortázar began a philosophy degree aged 18, but did not complete it due to financial woes.[15] The poet and critic Jorge Fondebrider studied literature at FFyL, and later served as director of the UBA-owned Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas.[16] The Manipulated Man author Esther Vilar,[17] and the poet and translator Alejandra Pizarnik,[18] also attended FFyL. The short story writer Samanta Schweblin studied film design at UBA.[19] Elena Presser also began her studies at the University of Buenos Aires,[20] as did film director Juan Cabral.[21]

References

  1. ^ "Censo estudiantil 2011" (PDF). uba.ar (in Spanish). Retrieved 9 September 2022.
  2. ^ Miceli, Claudio; Bruno, Darío; Riccitelli, Laura; Celentano, Carlos; Reghitto, Miguel. "Acerca de la creación de la primera cátedra de psicología en la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la UBA, 1896" (PDF). Facultad de Psicología UBA (in Spanish). Retrieved 23 September 2022.
  3. ^ "Facultad de Filosofía y Letras". uba.ar (in Spanish). Retrieved 23 September 2022.
  4. ^ "Carreras de grado". filo.uba.ar (in Spanish). Retrieved 23 September 2022.
  5. ^ "Secretaría de Posgrado". filo.uba.ar (in Spanish). Retrieved 23 September 2022.
  6. ^ Pagano, Nora Cristina (5 July 2019). "El reordenamiento del Instituto Ravignani durante los primeros 60 en la documentación institucional" (PDF). Trabajos y Comunicaciones (in Spanish). 50 (50). Universidad Nacional de La Plata: e097. doi:10.24215/23468971e097. S2CID 199147687.
  7. ^ Espinosa, Roberto (29 December 2019). "Francia distinguió a una historiadora tucumana". La Gaceta (in Spanish). Retrieved 23 September 2022.
  8. ^ "Peligra el edificio en donde funcionó el lujoso Palace Hotel". Clarín (in Spanish). 17 January 1999. Retrieved 23 September 2022.
  9. ^ "Museo Etnográfico Juan Bautista Ambrosetti". ilamdir.org (in Spanish). Retrieved 23 September 2022.
  10. ^ "Ricardo Gelpi fue electo rector de la UBA". rrhh.uba.ar (in Spanish). Retrieved 27 August 2022.
  11. ^ "La UBA inicia una nueva etapa con Yacobitti en la cabina de control". Letra P (in Spanish). 30 July 2022. Retrieved 19 September 2022.
  12. ^ "Murió el politólogo Ernesto Laclau, el pensador que inspiró al kirchnerismo" (in Spanish). 13 April 2014. Archived from the original on 14 April 2014. Retrieved 13 April 2014.
  13. ^ "La Fede, la juventud comunista que dio cuadros a la guerrilla y también a Menem". Clarín (in Spanish). 2 August 2009. Retrieved 2 January 2018.
  14. ^ Cols, Estela (2007). "Estilos de enseñanza: Sentidos personales y configuraciones de acción tras la semejanza de las palabras" (in Spanish). Retrieved 23 July 2023.
  15. ^ Herráez, Miguel (2011). Julio Cortázar, Una Biografía Revisada (in Spanish). Alrevés. p. 343. ISBN 9788415098034.
  16. ^ "Jorge Fondebrider abrió el Argentino de Literatura". unl.edu.ar (in Spanish). Retrieved 27 August 2022.
  17. ^ Times, Judith Weinraub Special to The New York (June 13, 1972). "She Says It's the Men Who Are Enslaved (Published 1972)". The New York Times.
  18. ^ Enríquez, Mariana (28 September 2012). "Soy". Página 12 (in Spanish). Retrieved 22 August 2020.
  19. ^ "Samanta Schweblin. Biografía". cervantes.es (in Spanish). Retrieved 27 August 2022.
  20. ^ "Elena Presser | National Museum of Women in the Arts". nmwa.org. Retrieved 2019-04-26.
  21. ^ "HOTLINE: Fallon poaches art director from Mother". Campaign. 9 January 2004. Retrieved 3 December 2011.
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