As an interior design aficionado, Jason Ruiz devotes considerable thought and attention to his office space. So when the Notre Dame professor of American studies became the director of the Institute for Latino Studies and moved into 316 Bond Hall this fall, he naturally wanted to start anew.
“I actually did not move very much from O’Shaughnessy Hall over here — just the monitor and a lamp, that’s it,” he said. “The space was just empty except for a little desk that was just way too small for me, so I started from scratch.”
This feature is part of a new College of Arts & Letters story series called “Office Hours” providing a glimpse into the personal and professional lives of Arts & Letters faculty by way of their workspaces around campus. This first installment highlights Ruiz, whose research and teaching focus on race and popular culture, Latinx studies, and gender and sexuality studies.
In this interview, Ruiz discusses important pieces in his new office that inspire him and are relevant to his research, his role as ILS director, and his personal life.
Ruiz’s answers have been edited for clarity and conciseness.
Q: What do you want people to feel when they enter?
A: I really wanted to make it light and open, for guests to feel interested in coming in and making themselves at home. I’ve had students come in and plop down on those chairs that spin around, and they tell me about their day and week.
Q: What is one piece that you think often gets overlooked, but is really meaningful for you?
A: This print of a railroad map to Mexico and Central America from the late 19th century. My first book (Americans in the Treasure House: Travel to Porfirian Mexico and the Cultural Politics of Empire, University of Texas Press, 2014) was about U.S. travel to Mexico, and this image means so much to me because it points to the exact moment when you could get on a train car in Chicago and be in Mexico City weeks later.
Everyone has maps framed, but for me, this really is a representation of the work I did for a decade of my life.
Another piece that is also super important to me is this cover of American Quarterly. I became the editor a little over a year ago, and we completely redesigned the cover — this issue just came out, in fact. We’ve been working on it for a year, so I have copies of it all over my office.
Q: What’s the most talked-about piece in this space?
A: This mural is by artist Maceo Montoya, who painted a bunch of stuff for ILS and is featured all around our space. It’s actually from Gilberto Cárdenas, who was the founding ILS director and a very well-known patron of the arts. I really like the scale of it, and I like that it’s kind of oversized in this room, but people give me grief about it, saying, ‘Oh, it’s so aggressive, and it’s so in your face.’
But the history of Latino studies is in struggle, is in strife — it can’t all be happy, colorful fiestas. I like that it speaks to the roots of Latino studies in activism and labor — my own grandfather was a migrant worker, like a lot of people around here who are associated with Latino studies. For me, the piece is like a great reminder of where you come from.
My work explores both the good and the bad in how Latinos are represented in popular culture. My second book, Narcomedia: Latinidad, Popular Culture, and America’s War on Drugs asks how Latinos and Latin Americans have been framed as the villains in the War on Drugs. Luckily, I don’t have anything in my office representing the substances I examined in that book. But seriously, all of my work is about the politics of representation, so I try to think critically about what’s hanging in my own office and all over the Institute for Latino Studies.
Q: What serves as a good reminder in your office?
A: This print means a lot to me, because it says “slow down, I’m in a hurry” in Spanish. And that is so me — I’m always in a hurry, but I’m always trying to slow myself down. I love slowing down, but I’m in a hurry, so that internal contradiction is so funny.
The print was made in Cali, Colombia, which is my partner’s hometown, where I lived on sabbatical, and where we own an apartment. They’re made on 19th-century screen presses, and these guys are so not hipster — they’re like these working-class Colombian guys who rehabbed two screen presses, and then they work with artists to roll out these incredible prints.
Q: What’s one thing in your office that people will never see?
A: Overhead lighting. I find fluorescent lights to be draining, horrible, unflattering, and the worst thing in the world. I am still working on lighting in here. The natural light here is for people like me who are lighting snobs, and they absolutely dream about this. And on a very sunny day, I’ve had to bring the shades down a little bit, but I try to keep them open because I like the views.
You can’t look at that Dome and Basilica every day and not think about where we are in the mission of Notre Dame. People say Bond Hall is on the outskirts and too far away. But look at that lake view over there, and the Dome view over there — it’s hard to beat.
Q: There are a lot of small trinkets on your bookshelf. What’s their importance?
A: This Pope Francis bobblehead was a gift from Jennifer Parker, the architecture librarian, who went to Rome, and I’m a big Francis fan, so she brought that back for me. I hope it’s understood that it’s meant to be a loving tribute and not a caricature.
Then I have this print from a graduate student I worked with on their dissertation about Latino public art. I work on a project called the Pilsen Project, which features murals in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. It’s a part of a bigger project called the Historic Urban Environments, and they brought me on years ago as sort of a person on the humanities side, and not the architecture side, to build a database on the murals in Pilsen on our interpretation. I’ve taught classes and worked with many students who’ve contributed to the work.
And I have the little cutout pieces of scenes from Mexico City that my partner brought back after a recent visit. To the left of them is called an alebrije, which is sort of mythological, mixed animal figures from Mexico — he bought me that, too. And then there’s this cutout of Christ the Redeemer in Rio that is also dear to me.
Q: How often does your dog Dolly come with you, and how important was it to find a space for her?
A: She comes most days at this point, and finding a space for her bed was imperative.
For me, it’s often convenient to bring her here because, right now, my kitchen is being gut rehabbed so I can’t leave her on the day that they’re installing cabinets. But I’ve had students volunteer to walk her, and I’m teaching a section of the Moreau First-Year Seminar, and students have requested that she come, so she’s joined us a few times.
Honestly, I mean, I think it’s got to be the best thing in the world to bring her here. It’s all because she’s such a good girl.
