Our Faculty

Background

Mateo Duque is an assistant professor in Binghamton University’s Philosophy Department. He received his PhD in 2020 from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). He was born in Colombia, South America, and grew up in the United States.

Duque has been at Binghamton University since 2020, first as a Presidential Diversity Postdoctoral Fellow (2020-2022) and currently as an assistant professor. His areas of research and teaching include ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, particularly Plato, as well as aesthetics, theater, comedy and performance, and philosophy as a way of life. He is at work on a monograph on what he calls “Socratic Mimēsis,” the moments in the Platonic dialogues when Socrates relinquishes speaking in his own voice and speaks in another persona. Socrates’ dramatic performances are a method for teaching indirectly and it is a necessary complement to his more well-known method of dialectic.

Duque chose the field of philosophy because it allows him to read, think and write about many different subjects. Besides his main areas of specialization and concentration, Duque has many other interests. He is versed in continental or European philosophy (Kant, Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Camus, Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari). He also has an abiding interest in American philosophy and pragmatism (James, Pierce, Dewey, Quine, West and Rorty). While at Binghamton, he has also been able to delve deeper into Buddhist philosophy with the help of Charles Goodman and his graduate students in a Buddhist philosophy reading group for several years.

Publications

• “Two Portraits of Protagoras in Plato: Theaetetus vs. Protagoras” (forthcoming in Illinois Classical Studies Vol. 47, No. 2)

• “Performing Philosophy: The Pedagogy of Plato’s Academy Reimagined.” in Paideia and Performance, edited by Henry C. Curcio, Mark Ralkowski, and Heather L. Reid. Siracusa: Parnassos Press, 2023.

• Co-editor, with Gerald A. Press, of The Bloomsbury Handbook of Plato. London: Bloomsbury, 2023.

• “‘Οὐκ ἔστιν’ (141e8): The Performative Contradiction of the First Hypothesis” in Plato’s Parmenides: Selected Papers from the Twelfth Symposium Platonicum (International Plato Studies), edited by Luc Brisson, Arnaud Macé, Olivier Renaut. Baden-Baden: Academia Verlag, 2023.

Education

• PhD, The Graduate Center of the City University of New York
• MA, University of South Florida in Tampa

Teaching Interests

• Along with regularly teaching Introduction to Philosophy and Plato and Aristotle

• Duque has taught: Platonic and Socratic Mimesis (graduate class
• spring 2021); Philosophy as a Way of Life (fall 2021); Thinking Performance (fall 2022); Philosophy and Comedy (spring 2023); and The Stoics and Politics (fall 2023). He looks forward to teaching Latin American Philosophy in fall 2024.