AUSTIN, Texas—Vicki Ruiz, professor of history and chair of the department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at Arizona State University, will present the Fourtheenth Annual Américo Paredes Distinguished Lecture, Comadres, Cowgirls, Curanderas: Spanish/Mexican Women and Their Border Journeys, 1540-1900.
The lecture on March 23 will begin at 7 p.m. in the Bass Lecture Hall of the LBJ School of Public Affairs. A reception after Ruiz’s lecture will celebrate the acquisition of the Américo Paredes Papers by the Benson Latin American Collection. Music at the reception will be provided by the Mariachi Paredes de Tejastitlán. The event is free and open to the public.
Ruiz, whose family is from Colorado, was born in Georgia and raised in Florida. She earned her bachelors degree in social sciences at Florida State University in 1977, graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. She obtained her M.A. and Ph.D. in history at Stanford University in 1978 and 1982, respectively. Ruiz then taught history at the University of Texas at El Paso and the University of California, Davis. Prior to her appointment at Arizona State University, she held an endowed chair at Claremont Graduate School.
Ruiz’s research interests include Chicano history, U.S. women’s history, gender and the U.S.-Mexico border, oral narratives, immigration history, labor studies and western history. Her extensive publications include the books Cannery Women, Cannery Lives: Mexican Women, Unionization, and the California Food-Processing Industry,1930-1950 (University of New Mexico Press, 1987) and From out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth-Century America(Oxford University Press, 1998).
The latter book was named a Choice Outstanding Academic Book of 1998. More recently, she and Virginia Sánchez Korrol received a Ford Foundation grant to co-edit Latinas in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia,to be published by Indiana University Press. In addition, Ruiz is working on a new manuscript, Gendered Narratives and the Crafting of History: Essays on Chicana/Latina History,which will be published by University of New Mexico Press.
The Américo Paredes Distinguished Lecture was established by the center in 1987. The series honors Américo Paredes, who before his death last year was the Dickson, Allen and Anderson Centennial Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and English at UT Austin. For more information, please call Jordana Barton at the Center for Mexican American Studies, (512) 471-2136.
