Jesús Ruiz

Jesús Ruiz (email)

Dr. Jesús Ruiz’s is an Assistant Professor of the Practice in Caribbean Studies. He received his Ph.D. in Latin American Studies from Tulane University, before being an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Emerging Voices Postdoc at Duke University (2020-2021). For the past two years, he’s been a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Collaborative Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow in American Studies at Vanderbilt.

Dr. Ruiz is a historian of Latin America and the Caribbean whose deeply transnational research focuses on slavery, freedom, and Black political thought in the Atlantic World. He teaches courses on Afro-Latin America, Migration in the Americas, and Caribbean Studies. He is particularly interested in the history of Haiti and its monumental revolution of 1791-1804, for which he offers a new history in his tentatively titled first book, The Black Royalists: Haiti and A Politics of Freedom in the Atlantic World (under contract with Harvard University Press). Examining the politics of royalism among both ordinary Haitians and those who became Haitian royalty as they struggled for independence throughout the tumultuous years of the revolution, his book outlines a transcultural political phenomenon and re-theorizes royalism. In doing so, The Black Royalists promises to offer a means to examine not only the history of the Haitian Revolution, but also the evolution of Black political thought during the Age of Revolutions.

As part of this research, Dr. Ruiz has a forthcoming article (March 2025) with Slavery & Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies, which analyzes the 1796 Boca Nigua slave revolt in colonial Santo Domingo (present-day Dominican Republic). His writing and teaching have also resulted in public-facing publications and awards. He’s written about the plight of Haitian asylum seekers in The Washington Post, and has published book reviews with The Bulletin of Latin American Research, H-France Forum, and H-Haiti. He has also won the Edward H. Moseley Award from The Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies (SECOLAS), as well as teaching awards from both Tulane—the William J. Griffith Teaching Award—and Vanderbilt, where he won The Maestrx Award for excellence in teaching.

Dr. Ruiz has received support from the Ford Foundation, The Fulbright Program, the Schomburg Center, the John Carter Brown Library, the Afro-Latin American Research Institute at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University, and the Omohundro Institute of Early American History, among others.

A first-generation citizen of the U.S. born in Los Angeles, CA to parents from Sonora, Mexico, Ruiz was raised in Arizona and became the first person in his family to go to college. He received his BA in Spanish with honors from St. Lawrence University, and his MA in Caribbean Studies from The University at Buffalo (SUNY), where he was an Arturo A. Schomburg Fellow. You can follow him on twitter: @PhDJesus.