MARIA CAMILA CASTRO MALDONADO
MARIA CAMILA CASTRO MALDONADO
I am a PhD candidate at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, working at the intersection of ethics and social philosophy. I also work across disciplines, including music, sound studies, and theology. My research focuses on the value of silence and listening for the cultivation of our moral selves. My projects are motivated by a concern for how loudness and action are regarded as the main places where our ethical lives are shaped, reconfigured, and disputed. Drawing on the work of bell hooks and Simone Weil, I explore the importance of our inner lives and receptive skills, which, only in balance with the active commitments, shape our beings more holistically. In my dissertation, “The Fullness of Silence: From Sinister to Virtuous Resonances,” I explore the ethical, epistemic, and communicative potential nested in silence but omitted by the preponderant discourse on silence as oppression.
I earned a Bachelor’s in Philosophy in 2016 and a Master’s in Philosophy in 2018, both from Universidad de los Andes