In Memoriam for Ricardo L. Ortiz
As many in our membership have probably heard, we write to mourn a giant of our field, Dr. Ricardo L. Ortiz, who passed away last week. Dr. Ortiz was Professor of English at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. He was a leading figure in Latinx literary and cultural studies for the past 30 years. To honor his memory, we wish to reflect on the importance of Dr. Ortiz and his work to the field of Latina/o/x Studies, and more broadly to the intellectual and academic communities of which he was a vibrant member.
Dr. Ortiz earned a BA in English and Economics from Stanford University in 1983, an MA in English in 1987 from UCLA, and a PhD in English in 1992, also from UCLA. He held tenure-track faculty appointments at San José State University and at Dartmouth College before starting at Georgetown University, where he earned tenure in 2005 and was promoted to Professor in 2021.
Dr. Ortiz will be remembered as a first-rate thinker, teacher, and mentor. His first book, Cultural Erotics in Cuban America was published in 2007 by the University of Minnesota Press. As an Angeleno to the core, Dr. Ortiz’s Cultural Erotics in Cuban America is a landmark study that relocated the centers of Cuban American studies by, for example, reading the Los Angeles Cuban community newsletters that circulated during his childhood. In critical moves like this, Dr. Ortiz’s argument shifted the locus of Cuban America by decentering Miami—a city that looms large in popular thinking about Cuban Americans. Although Dr. Ortiz rightfully acknowledges Miami as an important site of Cuban American cultural production, he underscores the ways that Cuban American artists with little or no connection to Miami have mobilized other US geographies in their imagination of Latinx and Cuban American identity. Moreover, Dr. Ortiz’s work demonstrates how the authors and artists included in Cultural Erotics resist compulsory heteronormativity and disrupt the Cold War binaries of Cuba/Miami. In short, Dr. Ortiz’s book established new ground for US Latinx Studies, Queer of Color Critique, and hemispheric studies of Latinidad.
For his second book, Latinx Literature Now: Between Evanescence and Event (Palgrave 2019), Dr. Ortiz set his sights on arguing for more rational formal and comparative approaches to the study of Latinidad. Rather than a destination, Dr. Ortiz argued for Latinidad as an unstable process of becoming. Although the reverberations of Latinx Literature Now are still emerging, Dr. Ortiz’s work in the book has had a major impact on both our methods and theoretical positions in relation to the comparative study of Latinx literature and culture.
In addition to his two books, Dr. Ortiz was the author of dozens of peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, special journal issues, and public-facing humanities essays. Over the course of his long and productive career, Dr. Ortiz published in several leading outlets in literature and cultural studies, including the South Atlantic Review, Aztlán: A Journal of Chicana/o Studies, Post-45, GLQ, Social Text, and many other prestigious peer-reviewed journals. He also published chapters in books like the recent Latinx Literature in Transition (Cambridge 2025) series and the landmark Gay Latino Studies (Duke 2011).
Beyond his scholarship, Dr. Ortiz was a respected and valued leader and citizen of the profession. He was a key contributor to the development of LSA, co-chairing the Site Committee of the Latina/o Studies Association Biennial Meeting held in Washington, DC in 2018. He was a past president of the Association of Departments of English, a consultant with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in Washington, DC, and a frequent program reviewer at English departments across the nation. He served as chair of his home department at Georgetown for six years and served a term as the director of the English MA Program and a term as the Director of the Program in Engaged and Public Humanities, a position he held until his untimely passing.
Dr. Ortiz was also a consummate citizen of the profession. He served on dozens of awards committees for national organizations, as an external tenure-reviewer, on search committees, and as a consultant for numerous organizations and universities across the country. He contributed to the growth and development of LSA in numerous ways, including attending initial organizational meetings, serving as a frequent presenter, and in organizing the 2018 conference.
One of the least recognized, but perhaps most impactful ways that Dr. Ortiz contributed to our profession was through the small acts of kindness, supportive words, and generous mentorship relationships he sustained over many years. He was a man known for his goodwill and energetic support of undergraduate and graduate students and junior faculty. The impact that he had on the development of Cuban American Studies, Hemispheric Américas Studies, Queer of Color Critique, and Comparative Latinx Studies cannot be underestimated. He will be mourned by the many friends, students, and citizens of the profession he touched throughout his long career. The Executive Committee of the Latina/o Studies Association is grateful to have known Dr. Ortiz and to have learned from him. The world was a better place with Ricardo Ortiz in it, and we send our condolences to his family and many close friends who feel his loss acutely.
Professor Ortiz is survived by his partner, Paul O’Neill, his sisters, Ana and Ana, and his nephew Colin.
The Executive Council of the Latina/o Studies Association, with contributions from Renee Hudson and Maia Gil’Adí
