Welcoming new faculty Luis Felipe Lomelí

March 1, 2024

This semester, one of our newest faculty members, Luis Felipe Lomelí, is hosting the "Meet the Author Club de Lectura," where students can read works by contemporary Latin American authors and then discuss with them via Zoom! Dr. Lomelí joined the Center in fall 2023, taking on the role of Undergraduate Coordinator at the Center, and teaching the undergraduate course “Intro to Latin American Studies,” as well as the graduate course “The Politics of Knowledge in Latin America.” He has degrees in Physics Engineering, Ecology, Cultural Studies of Science and Technology, and Spanish and Portuguese. In addition to his research, he is the author of both fiction and non-fiction books.

MALAS student Jane Perez sat down with Dr. Lomelí to learn more about his academic interests and teaching philosophy. Read more from Jane and Dr. Lomelí's conversation below!

Jane Perez: What drew you to your particular field in academia?

Dr. Lomelí: I wanted to understand the world. So I studied physics to get the material or mathematical approach to it, then I studied ecology to move up a little bit on the level of complexity of the models. Later I shifted to philosophy, and then to Spanish and Portuguese trying to add the human component to world systems. Of course, I still don’t understand the world.

My main area of research is around environment, philosophy, and literature. I think some of the environmental issues we have today have their roots in fundamental philosophical questions that we can't quite logically understand, but we can approach through literature. For example, when we say "we have to save the planet," that "we" may exclude millions of people. When we say “planet” we mean "nature," and nature is a concept that can include humans or not, depending on the culture. When we say "development," we think about very different and contradictory things.

In general, I am looking out for the internal complications concerning topics like these. And from there my research branches out to literature and cultural studies. For example, why do we associate winter with snow if we live in Gainesville? We are quite north, on 30° N.

Jane: What do you hope to accomplish in terms of writing your research here at UF?

Dr. Lomelí: Well, I have several projects. One is called something like "Nature from the Unnoticed World." Because all communication about nature, in general, is very confined to 2 or 3 categories. But in general, if a person with a university degree stands in any of the 90% of the world outside Europe or the United States, they encounter a series of plants, trees, or animals they have no idea about. Yet people in that country, with or without a university degree, know what they are.

So, I have a project about the nature of the world that “doesn't matter.” What can we learn from different nature-society relationships? For example, in places outside Europe and the United States, every time someone gets sick, the last thing we do is going to the doctor because there are a lot of more effective and cheaper natural remedies with fewer side effects, from teas, plants, and so on. This knowledge has been around for centuries, usually transmitted through women outside the Academy. And it’s the same with food (and its nutritional value) and other knowledges. For example, when you go to the Pretoria Botanical Garden and see the traditional Ndebele garden, it turns out that the same plants are used for the same purposes in Mexico or Colombia, and that knowledge is not in the academies—it’s grassroot knowledge. There is a whole world and a whole system of knowledge distribution, totally unrelated to what we know as knowledge.

Jane: You're definitely in the right place here in Florida.

Dr. Lomelí: Yes, in fact, one of the things I liked the most about the Center for Latin American Studies is that many people here are ecologists.

Jane: What are your teaching styles and goals?

Dr. Lomelí: I prefer to do everything as a seminar. I believe that the most important ideas that a person can come up with are developed before the age of 30, if not before 25, so the most exciting thing is what students think: their original ideas and the critiques they made to canonical authors. The usual dynamics in any of my classes starts with understanding what an author is trying to convince us about: “Okay, here’s what I agree with, what I like, and what makes sense.” And then, as we say in Mexico, we take a machete out and begin pointing out to everything that no longer works, everything that not make sense, or only makes sense in a very particular and privileged way: “This only applies here, or for this particular group of people, et cetera.”

Finally, we try to ground what is useful from that author for each one of us in the classroom—for each research project or interest—and what further developments or adjustments we will have to make to have a more complete or interesting approach. I think this type of dialogical approach gives us a better opportunity to listen to each other and grow together.

Thank you Jane and Dr. Lomelí for the interview! Learn more about Dr. Lomelí here.

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