Jason Ruiz

Jason Ruiz 2

Associate Professor,
Director of Undergraduate Studies

Ph.D., University of Minnesota
B.A.,   University of Minnesota

1041 Flanner Hall
University of Notre Dame                               
Notre Dame, IN  46556
Phone: (574) 631-2168               
Fax: (574) 631-4399   
jason.ruiz@nd.edu
 
Curriculum Vitae
 
Jason Ruiz is Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame, where he is affiliated faculty with the Program in Gender Studies and the Institute for Latino Studies.  He teaches courses in Latino studies, race and representation, border studies, and popular culture.

Ruiz’s research focuses on American perceptions of Mexico and Latin America with emphases on race, cultural and economic imperialism, tourism, gender, and sexuality.  His first book, Americans in the Treasure House: Travel to Porfirian Mexico and the Cultural Politics of Empire was published by the University of Texas Press in January 2014.  Ruiz has also published in the Radical History Review, American Studies, Journal of Transnational American Studies, and elsewhere. In addition, he is the co-editor of Radical History Review #100 (Winter 2007), Queer Twin Cities (University of Minnesota Press, 2010), and Radical History Review #123 (forthcoming). 

Professor Ruiz is currently researching his second book, Searching for Mañana, which examines American enclaves in Latin America from the turn of the twentieth century to the present.

Courses

  • AMST 20100   Intro to American Studies

  • AMST 30153   Mixed Race America

  • AMST 30162   Latinos in American Film

  • AMST 30169   Race & American Popular Culture      

  • AMST 30172   US Mexico Border

  • AMST 30184   Latinos in Chicagoland

  • AMST 43143   American Travels

  • AMST 47909  Senior Thesis Capstone

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Books

 

 

 

 

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“In this accessible and engaging book, Jason Ruiz argues that U.S. travelers and business people and their stories of nineteenth-century Mexico helped shape U.S. perceptions of the ‘primitive’ economy and people south of the border. Long before there was ‘spring break’ culture, travelers were producing a racialized, sexualized, gendered account of Mexico for U.S. audiences. Ruiz persuasively argues that we need to understand these ideas about Mexico to understand the Marines’ invasion of Veracruz, or to see why U.S. foreign policy treated the Mexican Revolution as such a threat.”
—Laura Briggs, Chair, Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, University of Massachusetts