Maria Cruz-Torres is a socio-cultural anthropologist who specializes in environmental, applied and economic anthropology. Her areas of teaching and research are gender and globalization; gender, sustainability and the environment; political ecology; women and work in the informal economic sector; impact of globalization upon local communities and households; and the environmental and social aspects of fisheries and aquaculture development. Professor Cruz-Torres geographic areas of interest are Latin America and the Caribbean. Currently she is conducting research on the topic of gender, globalization, and the environment in Mexico, and is also involved in a National Science Foundation interdisciplinary, transnational collaborative research project focusing on the links between human and biophysical processes in coastal marine ecosystems in Baja California, Mexico. She is an affiliated faculty member with the Center for Biodiversity Outcomes.
Professor Cruz-Torres' teaching reflects many of her research interests and she has developed and taught the following undergraduate and graduate courses: (1) Gender, Culture and Development (2) Gender and Globalization in Latin America; (3) Gender, Sustainability and Social Justice,; and (4) Gender, Globalization and Sustainability. These courses examine current issues facing women in Third World Countries, the manner in which gender shapes and is shaped by globalization processes, and promoting and achieving sustainability and social justice.
Professor Cruz-Torres is an ecological anthropologist whose research focuses on the role of the state, transnational economy, and natural resource exploitation, and their interrelated impacts on the physical environment and the formation of regional coastal areas and local level communities and households. For more than a decade, she has carried out intensive longitudinal empirical research in coastal Western Mexico treating different aspects of these interests. Dr. Cruz-Torres has developed a long-term intellectual and methodological program that now incorporates aspects of economic and political anthropology with an emphasis in understanding the globalizing links of colonial expansion on Latin America to the most recent transnational expansion of post-modern capitalism on the physical, social, economic, political, and cultural environments of human populations. Within this broad construct, she concentrates great attention to the evolving colonial, national, and post-revolutionary state policies that support these expansions and their ultimate impact on local-level community formations and the households of which they are comprised.
The resulting dynamics create new settlement and community forms, as well as redefinitions and negotiations of gender and class that affect the distribution and access to economic and natural resources. These various interests are expressed in her published articles and in her book "Lives of Dust and Water: An Anthropology of Change and Resistance in Northwestern Mexico" (University of Arizona Press). Her most current research, funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, examines the relationship between gender, natural resources and grassroots social movements in Northwestern Mexico.
Spring 2021 | |
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Course Number | Course Title |
TCL 443 | Politic Ecology of the Border |
WST 447 | Gender, Culture, & Development |
TCL 447 | Gender, Culture, & Development |
SOS 447 | Gender, Culture, & Development |
SGS 454 | Gender, Culture, & Development |
SOS 463 | Politic Ecology of the Border |
ASB 463 | Politic Ecology of the Border |
TCL 493 | Honors Thesis |
TSS 598 | Special Topics |
TSS 790 | Reading and Conference |
TSS 792 | Research |
Fall 2020 | |
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Course Number | Course Title |
ASB 220 | Exprsv Cltr Latin Am/Caribbean |
TCL 230 | Exprsv Cltr Latin Am/Caribbean |
TCL 444 | Ethnography Mexico & Bordrlnds |
ASB 464 | Ethnography Mexico & Bordrlnds |
TCL 492 | Honors Directed Study |
TCL 493 | Honors Thesis |
TSS 598 | Special Topics |
TSS 792 | Research |
Summer 2020 | |
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Course Number | Course Title |
TCL 492 | Honors Directed Study |
Spring 2020 | |
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Course Number | Course Title |
TCL 202 | Transborder Society&Culture II |
TCL 447 | Gender, Culture, & Development |
WST 447 | Gender, Culture, & Development |
SOS 447 | Gender, Culture, & Development |
SGS 454 | Gender, Culture, & Development |
TCL 499 | Individualized Instruction |
TSS 598 | Special Topics |
TSS 609 | Prspctus Desgn Trnsbd Studies |
TSS 690 | Reading and Conference |
Fall 2019 | |
---|---|
Course Number | Course Title |
ASB 220 | Exprsv Cltr Latin Am/Caribbean |
TCL 230 | Exprsv Cltr Latin Am/Caribbean |
TCL 443 | Politic Ecology of the Border |
SOS 463 | Politic Ecology of the Border |
ASB 463 | Politic Ecology of the Border |
TSS 598 | Special Topics |
TSS 607 | Colloq Transborder Studies |
TSS 690 | Reading and Conference |
Spring 2019 | |
---|---|
Course Number | Course Title |
TCL 447 | Gender, Culture, & Development |
SOS 447 | Gender, Culture, & Development |
WST 447 | Gender, Culture, & Development |
SGS 454 | Gender, Culture, & Development |
TCL 499 | Individualized Instruction |
TSS 504 | Tools for Transborder Research |
TSS 593 | Applied Project |
TSS 598 | Special Topics |
Spring 2018 | |
---|---|
Course Number | Course Title |
ASB 220 | Exprsv Cltr Latin Am/Caribbean |
TCL 230 | Exprsv Cltr Latin Am/Caribbean |
TCL 443 | Politic Ecology of the Border |
SOS 463 | Politic Ecology of the Border |
ASB 463 | Politic Ecology of the Border |
TSS 598 | Special Topics |
Fall 2016 | |
---|---|
Course Number | Course Title |
TCL 444 | Ethnography Mexico & Bordrlnds |
TCL 447 | Gender, Culture, & Development |
SOS 447 | Gender, Culture, & Development |
WST 447 | Gender, Culture, & Development |
SGS 454 | Gender, Culture, & Development |
ASB 464 | Ethnography Mexico & Bordrlnds |
TSS 598 | Special Topics |
2020-Present Fellow, Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain
And Ireland (RAI)
2018- Outstanding Latina faculty Research Award (Victoria
Foundation)
2017 - present Fellow (Anthropology Section), American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
2018 Outstanding Latina faculty Research Award (Victoria Foundation)
2016 - 2017 Arizona State University Leadership Academy, Team Cities
2014 ASU, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Undergraduate Summer Enrichment Award
2013 Visiting Scholar, School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, Marine Ecosystem Sustainability in the Artic and Subartic (NSF-IGERT) Program, University of Alaska at Fairbanks, September 16-20, 2013.
2010 - 2012 Carnegie Scholar, The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Arizona State University.
2007 Elected Fellow of the Society of Applied Anthropology
2005 Julian Steward Award (First Runner Up) American Anthropological Association (Anthropology and the Environment Section)
2004 Regents Faculty Award, University of California at Riverside
2003 The George Brown Jr. Award for Research Excellence, (University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States (UC-Mexus) (with Casey Walsh, UC-Santa Barbara)
1999 - 2000 Environmental Fellowship, Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA
1997 - 1998 Regents Faculty Award, University of California, Riverside
2003 - 2004 Regents Faculty Award, University of California, Riverside
1992 Penn State University, Minority Faculty Summer Program Fellowship, Department of Anthropology, June-August
1988 - 1991 Minority Academic Career (MAC) Fellowship, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ.
Conservation and Society
Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science
Fellow, Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland
American Anthropological Associatio
Association of Latina and Latino Anthropologists (ALLA)
Anthropology and the Environment (American Anthropological Association section)
Economic Anthropology (American Anthropological Association section)
Fellow, Society for Applied Anthropology
Latin American Studies Association (LASA)
Political Ecology Society (PESO)
The American Association of University Women
Sigma XI, The Scientific Research Honor Society