Faculty

Summary of Expertise

Mexican American cultural and social history; race, migration, and citizenship; Latinx literary, cultural, and visual studies; immigrant narratives; comparative ethnic studies; feminist and gender studies; speculative fiction and Latinxfuturism

Research Interests

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT MY RESEARCH, PLEASE VISIT MY WEBSITE.

I'm a scholar of Mexican American history; race, migration, and citizenship; comparative ethnic studies; Latinx literary, cultural, and visual studies; gender studies; and speculative fiction. 

I'm the author of Assimilation: An Alternative History (University of California Press, 2020) and The Woman in the Zoot Suit: Gender, Nationalism, and the Cultural Politics of Memory (Duke University Press, 2009). With Sylvanna M. Falcón, Steven C. McKay, Juan Poblete, and Felicity Amaya Schaeffer, I'm coeditor of Precarity and Belonging: Labor, Migration, and Noncitizenship (Rutgers University Press, 2021).

I've also written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, Public Books, and Boom California.   

My current research project, "Picturing Migration," explores the ways migration has been visualized in and by the Global North since the late nineteenth century. The vexed relationship between migration and settler colonialism and the movement of Mexican food beyond the Americas also continue to pique my curiosity. 

Biography, Education and Training

FOR MY BIO AND MORE INFORMATION ABOUT ME, PLEASE VISIT MY WEBSITE.

I'm chair of the Latin American and Latino Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. 

From 2013 to 2018, I directed UC Santa Cruz’s Chicano Latino Research Center, now the Research Center for the Americas.

I have a PhD in ethnic studies and a BA in English from the University of California, Berkeley. 

Honors, Awards and Grants

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT MY AWARDS, HONORS, AND GRANTS, PLEASE VISIT MY WEBSITE.

• Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University (2019-20)
• Fellow, Executive Vice Chancellor Fellows Academy, UC Santa Cruz (2018-19)
• Board Opportunity Fund Grant, UC Santa Cruz Foundation (2017-19)
• Principal Investigator, Non-citizenship, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation John E. Sawyer Seminar on the Comparative Study of Cultures (2016-17)
• Board Opportunity Fund Grant, UC Santa Cruz Foundation (2015-16)
• Co-principal Investigator, Working for Dignity, Engaging Humanities Public Humanities Project Grant, University of California Humanities Research Institute (2014-15)
• Co-principal Investigator, Latino Cultures Network, University of California Humanities Network Multicampus Research Group (2011-12)
• University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States (UC MEXUS) Grant (2011-12, 2015-16)
• UC Santa Cruz Excellence in Teaching Award (2010)
• Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship (2001-02)

Selected Publications

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT MY PUBLICATIONS, PLEASE VISIT MY WEBSITE. 

• "A Beacon of Futurity and a Balm of Security," Public Books, August 6, 2021. 
• "The Other Southland: Missions, Monuments, and Memory in Tovaangar," Boom California, July 26, 2021. 
• "From 'Crisis' to Futurity: Migration and Borderlands in the 21st Century," co-edited with Geraldo Cadava and A. Naomi Paik, Public Books, July 5, 2021. 
• Precarity and Belonging: Labor, Migration, and Noncitizenship, co-edited with Sylvanna M. Falcón, Steven C. McKay, Juan Poblete, and Felicity Amaya Schaeffer (Rutgers University Press, 2021).
• "Latinx Assimilation," Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, ed. Jon Butler, February 23, 2021. 
• "The U.S. Must Do More to Care for Its Caregivers" (with Glenn Kramon), The Atlantic, January 24, 2021. 
• Assimilation: An Alternative History (University of California Press, 2020).
• "Essential and Excluded: The Paradox of Assimilation in the United States," USC Dornsife Equity Research Institute, November 13, 2020.
• "For Hispanic Heritage--Why We Need to Build Toward a Latinx Future," UC Press Blog, October 8, 2020.
• "What Does Assimilation Mean?" Public Books, February 27, 2020.
• "The New Wealth Test for Immigrants Is Un-American," New York Times, February 24, 2020. 
• The Woman in the Zoot Suit: Gender, Nationalism, and the Cultural Politics of Memory (Duke University Press, 2009).
• "Afrofuturism/Chicanafuturism: Fictive Kin," Aztlán 33, no. 1 (2008): 185-194. 
• "Deus ex Machina: Tradition, Technology, and the Chicanafuturist Art of Marion C. Martinez," Aztlán 29, no. 2 (2004): 55-92.  

Selected Presentations

FOR LINKS TO MORE OF MY INTERVIEWS AND TALKS, PLEASE VISIT MY WEBSITE.

• "3 to 1: Mona Hatoum, Glass, Bottles, and Migration" (with Kathryn Wade and Tali Grinshpan), San José Museum of Art, August 20, 2021. 
• "The Other Southland: Missions, Monuments, and Memory in Tovaangar," Research Center for the Americas, University of California, Santa Cruz, May 13, 2021. 
• "Contesting the Nation" (with Kathleen Belew, Jefferson Cowie, and Margaret Levi), Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, February 25, 2020.
• "Human Migration," UC Santa Cruz Original Thinkers Friday Forum, Santa Cruz, CA, January 27, 2017. 
• "Home and Mobility." Event Santa Cruz VI: Bridging the Gap between UCSC and Downtown Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, March, 19, 2014.

Selected Recordings

FOR LINKS TO MORE OF MY INTERVIEWS AND TALKS, PLEASE VISIT MY WEBSITE.

• "America and the Zoot Suit" (with Jonathan Green), Blueprint, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, July 17, 2021. 
• "Catherine Ramirez on Missions, Monuments, Sites of Memory & Sites of Dispute" (with Chris Benner), The Cutting Edge, KSQD 90.7FM, Santa Cruz, CA, April 25, 2021. 
• "Catherine S. Ramírez Talks: Pachucas, Latinx Futurisms, Assimilation & Precarity" (with Frederick Luis Aldama), Latinx Pop Lab, March 3, 2021. 
• "Science Friday Book Club: Conjuring an Alternate History of Colonization" (with Aisha Matthews and Christie Taylor), Science Friday, October 16, 2020. 
• "Homeland Security," First Person Singular, KUSP 88.9FM, Santa Cruz, CA, May 15, 2011.

Teaching Interests

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT MY TEACHING, PLEASE VISIT MY WEBSITE.

Migration and citizenship studies; comparative ethnic studies; Latinx literary, cultural, and visual studies; United States cultural, ethnic, and immigration history and immigrant storytelling; Mexican American history; comparison as method in the humanities and qualitative social sciences; feminist and gender studies; speculative fiction and Latinxfuturism