Ana Ramos-Zayas appointed Frederick Clifford Ford Professor
Ana Ramos-Zayas, the newly appointed Frederick Clifford Ford Professor of Ethnicity, Race, and Migration and Professor of American Studies and Anthropology, conducts ethnographic research on the anthropology of race, class, and affect. Drawing on fieldwork in Brazil, Puerto Rico, and U.S. Latinx communities, Ramos-Zayas has examined systems of power and privilege at a variety of scales, ranging from U.S. imperial hemispheric politics to everyday forms of resistance. She is a member of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Her appointment became effective January 1, 2021.
Ramos-Zayas is the author of “National Performances: Class, Race, and Space in Puerto Rican Chicago” (The University of Chicago Press, 2003; ASA Latino Studies Book Award, 2006) and “Street Therapists: Affect, Race, and Neoliberal Personhood in Latino Newark” (The University of Chicago Press, 2012; Frank Bonilla Book Award 2010-12). Her most recent book, “Parenting Empires: Whiteness, Class, and the Moral Economy of Privilege in Latin America” (Duke University Press, 2020), examines the parenting practices of Brazilian and Puerto Rican upper-classes, as these alter urban landscapes; provide moral justifications for segregation, surveillance, and foreign interventions; and recast idioms of crisis, corruption, and austerity according to the dictums of U.S. empire. Ramos-Zayas is also co-author of “Latino Crossings: Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and the Politics of Race and Citizenship” (Routledge, 2003); co-editor of “Critical Dialogues in Latinx Studies: A Handbook” (NYU Press, in press); and co-editor of “Whiteness in Latin America and the Caribbean” (LACES, Latin American Studies Association, forthcoming). Ramos-Zayas has published journal articles in the fields of youth culture, race and critical race theory, citizenship and migration, the anthropology of emotion and affect, and Latin American and Caribbean elites.
Prior to joining Yale in 2017, Ramos-Zayas conducted post-doctoral work in Educational Evaluation Research at Harvard; taught at Rutgers University-New Brunswick; and occupied the Valentin Lizana y Parrague Endowed Chair at the City University of New York. Issues of social justice and the intersection of intimate worlds, anthropology of affect, and political economy are fundamental concerns in her research. Her current research focuses on Latinx and Latin American “life coaches,” and considers therapeutic social justice-based initiatives and alternative mental health practices.
