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Iris Ruiz

University of California, Merced, Merritt Writing Program, Faculty Member

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Dr. Iris Ruiz, Continuing Lecturer, Merritt Writing Program, UC Merced, California. Activities: CCCC Co-Chair, Latinx Caucus, CCCC Resolutions committee, CCCC Task Force on Standing Group Guidelines, CCCC Advancement of Knowledge Book Award Committee, NCTE Committee Against Racism and Bias, Lead Author NCTE Position Statement on Ethnic Studies, Peer Editor Rhetoric Review, WPA Journal, Constellations, and, Best of CCCC Independent Journals, Member of Latinx Caucus (2000-current). Publications: Palgrave MacMillan, titled, Reclaiming Composition for Chicano/as and other Ethnic Minorities: A Critical History and Pedagogy and Decolonizing Rhetoric and Composition Studies: New Latinx Keywords for Theory and Pedagogy, an article in WPA Journal on Race and WPA, and an article in _Composition Studies_ on "Decolonial Options and Writing Studies." with Damian Baca.

She also is the leader author of the Ethnic Studies Initiatives Position Statement stating that CCCC needs to continue to work toward greater inclusion of ethnic minority scholars and publications in the presentation and deliverance of the yearly conference. CCCC could benefit from letting lead scholars of color hold more featured panels and leadership positions as to foster a more inclusive environment.

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Papers by Iris Ruiz

“HELP I POSTED”: RACE, POWER, DISCIPLINARY SHIFTS, AND THE #WPALISTSERV-FEMINISTREVOLUTION

Systems Shift: Creating and Navigating Change in Rhetoric and Composition Administration, 2023

This chapter looks at how various Writing Studies scholars belonging to different backgrounds int... more This chapter looks at how various Writing Studies scholars belonging to different backgrounds interpreted their involvement with the downfall of the online space of the Writing Program Administration Listserv. The chapter also looks at how theories not likely to accompany one another might be used as a vehicle to examine the complexity of such immaterial spaces These theories are Decolonial Theory and Actor-Network Theory.

Syllabus WRI 120 rhetorical theory

Rhetorical Theory Syllabus, 2022

This course examines theories of rhetoric by examining rhetoric's relation to culture. If rhetori... more This course examines theories of rhetoric by examining rhetoric's relation to culture. If rhetoric refers to systems of symbol use, and if culture refers to forms of social organization, then the relation between rhetoric and culture must be intimate, because you need symbols in order to organize societies. Plan We will read, discuss, and write about several texts-two to three per week-that address theories of rhetoric, theories of culture, or both.

The Fourth Movement: Founder's Letter for Latinx Writing and Rhetoric Studies By

Latinx Writing and Rhetoric Studies, 2020

Writing this introductory letter, as a founding member of this journal, gives me wondrous and cho... more Writing this introductory letter, as a founding member of this journal, gives me wondrous and chontzin feelings of gratification. This first issue of LWRS has special significance as the inaugural issue is guest edited by Drs. Isabel Baca and Yndalecio Isaac Hinojosa, fellow NCTE/CCCC Latinx Caucus members. From the perspective of a former member of twenty years and co-chair of the NCTE/CCCC Latinx Caucus (2015-18), getting to this point has proven to have been a journey of camaraderie, self-reflection, activism, and transformation. Often, Caucus members would discuss the politics of citation in listserv discussions and at CCCC meetings. We noticed that we were playing fairly, we were also playing on an unequal playing field, and through past leaders like Felipe de Ortega y Gasca, we understood that these politics of citation had a history that was at least fifty years old. I won't go into too much detail about this history, but the publication of the first issue of LWRS is timely in that it accompanies a recently published history book by the Caucus. In this historical record of our Caucus, we engages deeply with these matters and pursued the documentation of our archival presence in the field since at least 1968. I encourage our readers to check out that history, Viva Nuestra Caucus: Rewriting the Forgotten Pages of our Caucus, now available through Parlor Press with the help of Dr. Stephen Parks, a long time advocate for the Latinx Caucus. This issue also includes some very important history in the introduction shared with us by Cecelia Milanes, former co-chair of the CCCC Latinx Caucus and lead editor of "Capirotada." Milanes provides our audience a glimpse of what the Caucus has been up to for the past few decades as we have celebrated each other's accomplishments even while we've been underrepresented.

The Fourth Movement: Founder's Letter for Latinx Writing and Rhetoric Studies By

Writing this introductory letter, as a founding member of this journal, gives me wondrous and cho... more Writing this introductory letter, as a founding member of this journal, gives me wondrous and chontzin feelings of gratification. This first issue of LWRS has special significance as the inaugural issue is guest edited by Drs. Isabel Baca and Yndalecio Isaac Hinojosa, fellow NCTE/CCCC Latinx Caucus members. From the perspective of a former member of twenty years and co-chair of the NCTE/CCCC Latinx Caucus (2015-18), getting to this point has proven to have been a journey of camaraderie, self-reflection, activism, and transformation. Often, Caucus members would discuss the politics of citation in listserv discussions and at CCCC meetings. We noticed that we were playing fairly, we were also playing on an unequal playing field, and through past leaders like Felipe de Ortega y Gasca, we understood that these politics of citation had a history that was at least fifty years old. I won't go into too much detail about this history, but the publication of the first issue of LWRS is timely in that it accompanies a recently published history book by the Caucus. In this historical record of our Caucus, we engages deeply with these matters and pursued the documentation of our archival presence in the field since at least 1968. I encourage our readers to check out that history, Viva Nuestra Caucus: Rewriting the Forgotten Pages of our Caucus, now available through Parlor Press with the help of Dr. Stephen Parks, a long time advocate for the Latinx Caucus. This issue also includes some very important history in the introduction shared with us by Cecelia Milanes, former co-chair of the CCCC Latinx Caucus and lead editor of "Capirotada." Milanes provides our audience a glimpse of what the Caucus has been up to for the past few decades as we have celebrated each other's accomplishments even while we've been underrepresented.

Performing Feminist Action: A Toolbox for Feminist Research & Teaching

To open the map in a new window, click here.

Desconocimiento: A Process of Epistemological Unknowing through Rhetorical Nepantla

Writing Across Difference: Theory and Intervention, 2022

Race, Rhetoric, and Research Methods

Decolonizing Rhetoric and Composition Studies

Decolonizing Rhetoric and Composition Studies, 2016

Shattering glass mirrors| A case for historiographic theory and writing in composition studies

Abstract: My dissertation, Shattering Glass Mirrors: A Case for Historiographic Theory and Writin... more

Reclaiming Composition for Chicano/as and Other Ethnic Minorities

Decolonial Options and Writing Studies

by Iris Ruiz and Damián Baca

Correction to: Race

Decolonizing Rhetoric and Composition Studies, 2019

La Indigena: Risky Identity Politics and Decolonial Agency as Indigenous Consciousness

The Journal of Pan-African Studies, 2018

Iris Ruiz is a Lecturer in the Merritt Writing Program at UC, Merced, which is located in the hea... more Iris Ruiz is a Lecturer in the Merritt Writing Program at UC, Merced, which is located in the heart of the Central Valley and is a designated Hispanic Serving Institution. She teaches courses in advanced composition, journal editing, first and second year composition and Chicanx Studies. She recently published Reclaiming Composition for Chicano/as and other Ethnic Minorities: A Critical History and Pedagogy and an edited collection, Decolonizing Rhetoric and Composition Studies: New Latinx

Decolonizing Rhetoric and Composition Studies, 2016

The Second Reconstruction: The Civil Rights Era and Composition’s Response to the New “Egalitarian” University

Reclaiming Composition for Chicano/as and Other Ethnic Minorities, 2016

Historiography in the Writing Classroom: A Case for Teaching Chicano/Chicana-Latinos and Latinas History as an Alternative to Traditional Multicultural Pedagogies

Reclaiming Composition for Chicano/as and Other Ethnic Minorities, 2016

Post-Structuralism, Historical Theory, and Critical Race Theory: A Pyramid for Critical Historical Analysis

Reclaiming Composition for Chicano/as and Other Ethnic Minorities, 2016

A History Untold: Composition’s Connected Past to the Educational Reforms of the Reconstructive Era

Reclaiming Composition for Chicano/as and Other Ethnic Minorities, 2016

Guatemala as a Site for Critical Historiography

Reclaiming Composition for Chicano/as and Other Ethnic Minorities, 2016

Introduction to the Field of Composition: Politics from the Start

Reclaiming Composition for Chicano/as and Other Ethnic Minorities, 2016

“HELP I POSTED”: RACE, POWER, DISCIPLINARY SHIFTS, AND THE #WPALISTSERV-FEMINISTREVOLUTION

Systems Shift: Creating and Navigating Change in Rhetoric and Composition Administration, 2023

This chapter looks at how various Writing Studies scholars belonging to different backgrounds int... more This chapter looks at how various Writing Studies scholars belonging to different backgrounds interpreted their involvement with the downfall of the online space of the Writing Program Administration Listserv. The chapter also looks at how theories not likely to accompany one another might be used as a vehicle to examine the complexity of such immaterial spaces These theories are Decolonial Theory and Actor-Network Theory.

Syllabus WRI 120 rhetorical theory

Rhetorical Theory Syllabus, 2022

This course examines theories of rhetoric by examining rhetoric's relation to culture. If rhetori... more This course examines theories of rhetoric by examining rhetoric's relation to culture. If rhetoric refers to systems of symbol use, and if culture refers to forms of social organization, then the relation between rhetoric and culture must be intimate, because you need symbols in order to organize societies. Plan We will read, discuss, and write about several texts-two to three per week-that address theories of rhetoric, theories of culture, or both.

The Fourth Movement: Founder's Letter for Latinx Writing and Rhetoric Studies By

Latinx Writing and Rhetoric Studies, 2020

Writing this introductory letter, as a founding member of this journal, gives me wondrous and cho... more Writing this introductory letter, as a founding member of this journal, gives me wondrous and chontzin feelings of gratification. This first issue of LWRS has special significance as the inaugural issue is guest edited by Drs. Isabel Baca and Yndalecio Isaac Hinojosa, fellow NCTE/CCCC Latinx Caucus members. From the perspective of a former member of twenty years and co-chair of the NCTE/CCCC Latinx Caucus (2015-18), getting to this point has proven to have been a journey of camaraderie, self-reflection, activism, and transformation. Often, Caucus members would discuss the politics of citation in listserv discussions and at CCCC meetings. We noticed that we were playing fairly, we were also playing on an unequal playing field, and through past leaders like Felipe de Ortega y Gasca, we understood that these politics of citation had a history that was at least fifty years old. I won't go into too much detail about this history, but the publication of the first issue of LWRS is timely in that it accompanies a recently published history book by the Caucus. In this historical record of our Caucus, we engages deeply with these matters and pursued the documentation of our archival presence in the field since at least 1968. I encourage our readers to check out that history, Viva Nuestra Caucus: Rewriting the Forgotten Pages of our Caucus, now available through Parlor Press with the help of Dr. Stephen Parks, a long time advocate for the Latinx Caucus. This issue also includes some very important history in the introduction shared with us by Cecelia Milanes, former co-chair of the CCCC Latinx Caucus and lead editor of "Capirotada." Milanes provides our audience a glimpse of what the Caucus has been up to for the past few decades as we have celebrated each other's accomplishments even while we've been underrepresented.

The Fourth Movement: Founder's Letter for Latinx Writing and Rhetoric Studies By

Writing this introductory letter, as a founding member of this journal, gives me wondrous and cho... more Writing this introductory letter, as a founding member of this journal, gives me wondrous and chontzin feelings of gratification. This first issue of LWRS has special significance as the inaugural issue is guest edited by Drs. Isabel Baca and Yndalecio Isaac Hinojosa, fellow NCTE/CCCC Latinx Caucus members. From the perspective of a former member of twenty years and co-chair of the NCTE/CCCC Latinx Caucus (2015-18), getting to this point has proven to have been a journey of camaraderie, self-reflection, activism, and transformation. Often, Caucus members would discuss the politics of citation in listserv discussions and at CCCC meetings. We noticed that we were playing fairly, we were also playing on an unequal playing field, and through past leaders like Felipe de Ortega y Gasca, we understood that these politics of citation had a history that was at least fifty years old. I won't go into too much detail about this history, but the publication of the first issue of LWRS is timely in that it accompanies a recently published history book by the Caucus. In this historical record of our Caucus, we engages deeply with these matters and pursued the documentation of our archival presence in the field since at least 1968. I encourage our readers to check out that history, Viva Nuestra Caucus: Rewriting the Forgotten Pages of our Caucus, now available through Parlor Press with the help of Dr. Stephen Parks, a long time advocate for the Latinx Caucus. This issue also includes some very important history in the introduction shared with us by Cecelia Milanes, former co-chair of the CCCC Latinx Caucus and lead editor of "Capirotada." Milanes provides our audience a glimpse of what the Caucus has been up to for the past few decades as we have celebrated each other's accomplishments even while we've been underrepresented.

Performing Feminist Action: A Toolbox for Feminist Research & Teaching

To open the map in a new window, click here.

Desconocimiento: A Process of Epistemological Unknowing through Rhetorical Nepantla

Writing Across Difference: Theory and Intervention, 2022

Race, Rhetoric, and Research Methods

Decolonizing Rhetoric and Composition Studies

Decolonizing Rhetoric and Composition Studies, 2016

Shattering glass mirrors| A case for historiographic theory and writing in composition studies

Abstract: My dissertation, Shattering Glass Mirrors: A Case for Historiographic Theory and Writin... more

Reclaiming Composition for Chicano/as and Other Ethnic Minorities

Decolonial Options and Writing Studies

by Iris Ruiz and Damián Baca

Correction to: Race

Decolonizing Rhetoric and Composition Studies, 2019

La Indigena: Risky Identity Politics and Decolonial Agency as Indigenous Consciousness

The Journal of Pan-African Studies, 2018

Iris Ruiz is a Lecturer in the Merritt Writing Program at UC, Merced, which is located in the hea... more Iris Ruiz is a Lecturer in the Merritt Writing Program at UC, Merced, which is located in the heart of the Central Valley and is a designated Hispanic Serving Institution. She teaches courses in advanced composition, journal editing, first and second year composition and Chicanx Studies. She recently published Reclaiming Composition for Chicano/as and other Ethnic Minorities: A Critical History and Pedagogy and an edited collection, Decolonizing Rhetoric and Composition Studies: New Latinx

Decolonizing Rhetoric and Composition Studies, 2016

The Second Reconstruction: The Civil Rights Era and Composition’s Response to the New “Egalitarian” University

Reclaiming Composition for Chicano/as and Other Ethnic Minorities, 2016

Historiography in the Writing Classroom: A Case for Teaching Chicano/Chicana-Latinos and Latinas History as an Alternative to Traditional Multicultural Pedagogies

Reclaiming Composition for Chicano/as and Other Ethnic Minorities, 2016

Post-Structuralism, Historical Theory, and Critical Race Theory: A Pyramid for Critical Historical Analysis

Reclaiming Composition for Chicano/as and Other Ethnic Minorities, 2016

A History Untold: Composition’s Connected Past to the Educational Reforms of the Reconstructive Era

Reclaiming Composition for Chicano/as and Other Ethnic Minorities, 2016

Guatemala as a Site for Critical Historiography

Reclaiming Composition for Chicano/as and Other Ethnic Minorities, 2016

Introduction to the Field of Composition: Politics from the Start

Reclaiming Composition for Chicano/as and Other Ethnic Minorities, 2016

Race, Rhetoric, and Research Methods

by Iris Ruiz, Alexandria Lockett, and Christopher S Carter

WAC Clearinghouse, 2021

Race, Rhetoric, and Research Methods explores multiple antiracist, decolonial forms of study that... more Race, Rhetoric, and Research Methods explores multiple antiracist, decolonial forms of study that are relevant to 21st-century knowledge production about language, communication, technology, and culture. The book presents a rare collaboration among scholars representing different racial and ethnic backgrounds, genders, and ranks within the field of Rhetoric, Composition, and Writing Studies (RCWS). In each chapter, the authors examine the significance of their individual experiences with race and racism across contexts. Their research engages the politics of embodiment, institutional critique, multimodal rhetoric, materiality, and public digital literacies. The book merges impassioned storytelling with unflinching analysis, offering a multi-voiced argument that spotlights the field's troubled history with theorizing about race and epistemology. Although the authors directly address aspiring and current RCWS professionals, they model how a comprehensive consideration of race adds legitimacy and integrity to any subject of study. This co-authored work charts uncommon paths forward, demonstrating reflexive engagement with legacies that are personal and transnational, as well as with technologies that are both dehumanizing and liberating.

Race, Rhetoric, and Research Methods

Race, Rhetoric, and Research Methods, 2021

Race, Rhetoric, and Research Methods explores multiple antiracist, decolonial forms of study that... more Race, Rhetoric, and Research Methods explores multiple antiracist, decolonial forms of study that are relevant to 21st-century knowledge production about language, communication, technology, and culture. The book presents a rare collaboration among scholars representing different racial and ethnic backgrounds, genders, and ranks within the field of Rhetoric, Composition, and Writing Studies (RCWS). In each chapter, the authors examine the significance of their individual experiences with race and racism across contexts. Their research engages the politics of embodiment, institutional critique, multimodal rhetoric, materiality, and public digital literacies. The book merges impassioned storytelling with unflinching analysis, offering a multi-voiced argument that spotlights the field's troubled history with theorizing about race and epistemology. Although the authors directly address aspiring and current RCWS professionals, they model how a comprehensive consideration of race adds legitimacy and integrity to any subject of study. This co-authored work charts uncommon paths forward, demonstrating reflexive engagement with legacies that are personal and transnational, as well as with technologies that are both dehumanizing and liberating. Link to OER: https://wac.colostate.edu/books/perspectives/race/

From: Title Viva Nuestro Caucus: Rewriting the Forgotten Pages of Our Caucus Working and Writing for Change Series Creating a "New History" within NCTE/CCCC: Civil Rights, The Chicano Movement, and Honoring Felipe de Ortego y Gasca

Viva Nuestro Caucus: Rewriting the Forgotten Pages of Our Caucus, 2019

This chapter has focused upon the Chicano movement, located in the southwestern United States, wh... more This chapter has focused upon the Chicano movement, located in the southwestern United States, which is shown to be directly tied to the creation of the Chicano Teachers of English and to the field of Composition Studies and its affiliate professional organizations: NCTE and CCCC. Half of a century has passed since Felipe de Ortego y Gasca, late Chicano literary icon, pioneer, and civil rights historian, began to reflect upon a need to provide more visibility for Chicano literary figures in American Literature. As a Chicano scholar-activist who committed himself to ensuring that this inclusion took place, Ortego y Gasca has gained a reputation as an activist who is no stranger to standing on the front lines of the civil rights movement, battling against the exclusion of and resistance to Chicano literary representation. There is no doubt that Ortego y Gasca’s activism within NCTE is partially motivated by his experience with editorial rejections of his own scholarly work on at least three occasions by one of English Studies’ flagship journals, College English.,

Decolonizing Rhetoric and Composition Studies

This book brings together Latinx scholars in Rhetoric and Composition to discuss keywords that ha... more This book brings together Latinx scholars in Rhetoric and Composition to discuss keywords that have been misused or appropriated by forces working against the interests of minority students. For example, in educational and political forums, rhetorics of identity and civil rights have been used to justify ideas and policies that reaffirm the myth of a normative US culture that is white, Eurocentric, and monolinguistically English. Such attempts amount to a project of neo-colonization, if we understand colonization to mean not only the taking of land but also the taking of culture, of which language is a crucial part. The editors introduce the concept of epistemic delinking and argue for its use in conceptualizing a kind of rhetorical and discursive decolonization, and contributors offer examples of this decolonization in action through detailed work on specific terms. Specifically, they draw on their training in rhetoric and on their own experiences as people of color to help reset the field's agenda. They also theorize new keywords to shed light on the great varieties of Latinx writing, rhetoric, and literacies that continue to emerge and circulate in the culture at large, in the hope that the field will feel more urgently the need to recognize, theorize, and teach the intersections of writing, pedagogy, and politics.

Reclaiming Composition for Chicano/as and other Ethnic Minorities: A Critical History and Pedagogy.

This book examines the history of ethnic minorities--particularly Chicano/as and Latino/as--in th... more This book examines the history of ethnic minorities--particularly Chicano/as and Latino/as--in the field of composition and rhetoric; the connections between composition and major US historical movements toward inclusiveness in education; the ways our histories of that inclusiveness have overlooked Chicano/as; and how this history can inform the teaching of composition and writing to Chicano/a and Latino/a students in the present day. Bridging the gap between Ethnic Studies, Critical History, and Composition Studies, Ruiz creates a new model of the practice of critical historiography and shows how that can be developed into a critical writing pedagogy for students who live in an increasingly multicultural, multilingual society.

Decolonizing Rhetoric Book Review

D ecolonizing Rhetoric and Composition Studies: New Latinx Keywords for Theory and Pedagogy repre... more D ecolonizing Rhetoric and Composition Studies: New Latinx Keywords for Theory and Pedagogy represents a movement among some twenty-first century Latinx scholars to claim and reclaim rhetoric and writing from colonialism. As a whole, Decolonizing Rhetoric and Composition Studies distinguishes itself because of its conceptualization and application of the decolo-nial, which until now, with some exceptions, has been limited to indigenous studies in rhetoric and composition. The concepts of decolonization, decolo-niality, and epistemic delinking serve as the lens through which Latinx scholars analyze rhetoric and writing from theoretical, pedagogical, and research perspectives and attempt to epistemically delink language " from the falsely universalized notions of rhetoric that have accompanied Western Modernity's spread across this hemisphere " (xiv). The Latinx culture itself inspires and influences the conceptual framework and application of the decolonial in this collection. Editors Iris D. Ruiz and Raúl Sánchez intended to bring the field " closer to issues that are relevant to Latinx's experiences " (xiv). Latinx scholars in Decolonizing Rhetoric and Composition Studies, argue Ruiz and Sánchez, follow " the process of recreating , redefining, and reviving " (xvi) that characterizes the work of rhetoric and writing scholars Victor Villanueva and Damián Baca, particularly in their edited collection Rhetorics of the Americas (xiv). To my mind, this process harkens back further to Villanueva's scholarship on memory and racism, Ellen Cush-man's scholarship on the rhetorician as an agent of social change, and Scott Richard Lyons's scholarship on the formation of publics for publicly oriented writing classrooms. In what follows, I evaluate Decolonizing Rhetoric and Composition Studies through the authors' conceptualization and application of the decolonial, description of the significance of racism to epistemic delinking and decoloniality, questions about the role of Latinx in the decolonial, and articulation of the problem the decolonial may pose to the field—a problem about which bell hooks wrote more than twenty years ago. Decolonization, decoloniality, and epistemic delinking are interrelated concepts attributed to Walter Mignolo, the Argentine semiotician influenced by the Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano, both pillars in the field of decolonial