Oakes Faculty Fellows

The Oakes College faculty represents a wealth of expertise from the natural sciences to the humanities, and we are proud to have some of the top scholars in the world among our faculty. Our students major in nearly every discipline at UCSC—from economics and computer science, to theater arts and Latin American and Latino studies—and they are well supported by the depth and breadth of the Oakes College faculty and the extensive knowledge of our advising team.

TBA is Oakes's faculty chair!

The Chair of the Faculty is an Academic Senate member, other than the Provost, who is elected by the college Faculty to serve a two year term, and will serve as a member of the Executive Committee.

 

Catherine Sue Ramirez
  • Pronouns she, her, her, hers, herself
  • Title
    • Professor
  • Division Social Sciences Division
  • Department
    • Latin American & Latino Studies
    • Merrill College
  • Affiliations Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas, History of Art/Visual Culture
  • Phone
    831-459-3020
  • Email
  • Website
  • Office Location
    • Merrill College Academic Building, 108
  • Office Hours On leave 2025-2026
  • Mail Stop Merrill/Crown Faculty Services
  • Mailing Address
    • 1156 High Street
    • Santa Cruz CA 95064
  • Faculty Areas of Expertise American Studies, Border Studies, Chicana/o Studies, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, Cultural Studies, Feminist Studies, Gender Studies, Immigration, Latin American and Latino Studies, Literature
  • Courses LALS 1: Introduction to Latin American & Latino Studies; LALS 100B: Cultural Theory in the Americas; LALS 131: Latinx Literature; LALS 137: Speculative Fiction & Chicanafuturism; LALS 184S: Global Seminar: Latin American Spain (Madrid, Spain); LALS 190G: Global Internship (Buenos Aires, Argentina); LALS 194A: Immigrant Storytelling; LALS 194R/L: Latinx Science Fiction: The Future; LALS 201: Research in Practice; LALS 205: Comparison as Method

Summary of Expertise

  • Latinx literature, history, visual culture, and performance
  • Immigration and assimilation 
  • Zoot suits and style politics
  • Historical memory
  • Latinxfuturism 

Research Interests

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). With A. Naomi Paik, I co-edit the Borderlands Section of Public Books

Since 2002, I've published more than a dozen essays about Latinx speculative fiction, a field I helped build with my catalytic 2004 article, "Deus Ex Machina: Tradition, Technology, and the Chicanafuturist Art of Marion C. Martinez."

With Jonathan X. Inda and the support of a Crossing Latinidades grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, I'm coediting a volume titled Bioprecarity: Latinx Migrants, Embodied Vulnerability, and Lived Experience

I'm also studying the life and work of Czarina Wilpert (née Huerta), an extraordinary and prescient scholar of migration, labor, and race in Germany.

In addition to my academic publications, I've written for The New York TimesThe Atlantic, The Washington Post, and Zócalo Public Square


 


Biography, Education and Training

I'm Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies (LALS) at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

From 2021 until 2025, I chaired the LALS Department. Previously, I directed UC Santa Cruz’s Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas (formerly the Chicano Latino Research Center).

In addition to UC Santa Cruz's Excellence in Teaching Award, I've won awards from the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, and the Phi Beta Kappa Society. 

A first-generation college graduate, I have a PhD in ethnic studies and a BA in English from the University of California, Berkeley. 

For my CV and more information about me and my work, please visit my website.

Honors, Awards and Grants

Selected Publications

Selected Presentations

Selected Recordings

 

Teaching Interests

  • Latinx literature
  • Immigrant storytelling
  • Speculative fiction, Afrofuturism and Latinxfuturism
  • Immigration and assimilation
  • Introduction to Latin American and Latinx studies
  • Comparison as method in the humanities and qualitative social sciences
  • Research in Practice 
  • Global Internship (Barcelona, Spain, and Buenos Aires, Argentina)
  • Latin American Spain (Madrid, Spain)