Ruben Zecena is an interdisciplinary scholar specializing in contemporary Latinx Literature and Culture, which he engages through the lens of Queer of Color Critique, Border Studies, Affect Theory, and Transnational American Studies. He received his PhD in Gender & Women's Studies, with a minor in Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory, from the University of Arizona (2021). His work is animated by his experiences as a formerly undocumented queer migrant from El Salvador.

He is completing his first monograph, Impossible Possibilities: The Unruly Imaginaries of Queer and Trans Migrants. The book explores the cultural productions of LGBTQ migrants as a blueprint from which to question, critique, and re-imagine the contours of national belonging. It is under advance contract with University of Texas Press. His scholarship appears in WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly, Prose Studies, Díalogo, Studies in Spanish & Latin American Cinemas, among others. 

Prior to joining UC Davis, he was an assistant professor of English at Texas State University. 

Publications:

Articles

"Unspoken desires: Transgressing representation in Mosquita y Mari (Guerrero 2012)," Studies in Spanish & Latin American Cinemas 19.1 (2022): 3-18.

"Messy queer familias: Negotiating desire, pleasure, and melancholia in Vida," Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture 7.1-2 (2022): 69-81.

"Memories of desire: reading backwards movement in Rigoberto González's Butterfly Boy," Prose Studies: History, Theory, Criticism 42.3 (2021): 204-220. 

"Border Desires: Mapping Queer Worlds in the Work of Benjamin Alire Saénz," Díalogo, an Interdisciplinary Studies Journal 24.1 (2021): 35-46.

"Migrating like a Queen: Visuality and Performance in the Trans Gay Caravan," WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly 47.3-4 (2019): 99-118.

Co-authored with Alejandra Ramírez. "'The Dirt Under My Mom's Fingernails': Queer Retellings and Migrant Sensualities," constellations: a cultural rhetorics publishing space 2 (2019). 

"Learning Where to Listen: Examining Third-Space Activism in Times of Neoliberalism," Border-Lines: Journal of the Latino Research Center 10 (2016): 91-113.

Essays

"Queer Diasporic Sensibilities: Unicorns, Glitter, and Loss in Maya Chinchilla's Chapina Poética," Latinx Talk (2022). 

Book Chapters

Co-authored with Alejandra Ramírez. "'The Dirt Under My Mom's Fingernails': Queer Retellings and Migrant Sensualities." Best of the Journals in Rhetoric & Composition 2021. Edited by Kristi Girdharry, Charles Lesh, Jessica Pauszek, David Blakesley, and Steve Parks (Parlor Press, 2023), 3-29. 

Co-authored with Ashley Boyd. "Young Adult Literature as Companion to Sex, Gender, and Consent in the Canon: Pairing Gabi, a Girl in Pieces and The Scarlett Letter." Edited by Paula Greathouse and Victor Malo-Juvera (Roman & Littlefield Press, 2021), 51-68.

"Shameless Interruptions: Finding Survival at the Edges of Trans and Queer Migrations." Queer and Trans Migrations: Dynamics of Illegalization, Detention, and Deportation. Edited by Eithne Luibhéid and Karma Chávez (University of Illinois Press, 2020), 175-192.

Co-authored with Ashley Boyd. "Analyzing the Text, Analyzing the World: Developing Student's Critical Literacies with Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe." Edited by Paula Greathouse, Brooke Eisenbach, and Joan Kaywell (Roman & Littlefield Press, 2018), 61-70.