Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Continental Shifts
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.wm.edu/as/modernlanguages/faculty/hispanic/riofrio_j.php * https://www.wm.edu/news/stories/2015/riofrio-honored-with-jefferson-teaching-award123.php * http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/john-riofrio * http://wydaily.com/2015/10/29/local-news-wjcc-school-board-berkeley-district-qa-john-rio-riofrio/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.:
no2015011627
LCCN Permalink:
https://lccn.loc.gov/no2015011627
HEADING:
Riofrio, John D., 1972-
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1_ |a Riofrio, John D., |d 1972-
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__ |a College of William and Mary |2 naf
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1_ |a Riofrio, John “Rio”, |d 1972-
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1_ |a Riofrio, Rio, |d 1972-
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__ |a Continental shifts, 2015: |b ECIP t.p. (John D. “Rio” Riofrio) data view (John “Rio” Riofrio is an assitant professor of Latino and Hispanic studies at the College of William and Mary; b. May 11, 1972)
PERSONAL
Born May 11, 1972; children: four.
EDUCATION:University of Wisconsin-Madison, Ph.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Academic. College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA, associate professor.
AWARDS:Thomas Jefferson Teaching Award, College of William and Mary, 2015.
WRITINGS
Contributor to academic journals, including American Book Review, Hispanófila, and Symploke.
SIDELIGHTS
John D. Riofrio is an academic. After completing a Ph.D. in English from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he began working at the Hispanic Studies Program in the Department of Modern Languages and Literature at The College of William and Mary, where he eventually became an associate professor. Riofrio has contributed to a number of academic journals, including the American Book Review, Hispanófila, and Symploke.
He has also been involved in the local school board in Virginia. In an interview in the Williamsburg Yorktown Daily, Riofrio discussed what he saw as being the three biggest problems facing the Williamsburg-James City County School System. Riofrio contended that “test anxiety, busses and quality of life for students. Numbers one and three are closely related. I believe we need to take a step back and look at what we expect students to do. They get by with very little recess, they have PE once a week (in Elementary School), their lunch times are often so short that they don’t finish eating their lunch, they are often in their seats for long periods of time.” He added that “these things absolutely should change. We should not be cutting recess and we should push hard to figure out how the bus situation contributes to these problems.” He also shared his support for later school start times for middle and high school students, citing that the majority of research “suggests that middle and high school students do better when they sleep in, that they are in better cognitive shape.”
In an interview in the William and Mary Web site, Riofrio talked about his winning the Thomas Jefferson Teaching Award. He described his teaching philosophy as the following: “Good teachers are constantly critiquing themselves. One of my advisers once said that good teachers were inherently like thieves: They would see a good idea and steal it, take it for their own classrooms and their own pedagogy. He’s absolutely right about that,” adding that “William & Mary is absolutely sincere about its dedication to teaching. I never felt like if I had published two brilliant books in my field and had been a terrible teacher, I would have been able to stay.” In the same interview, he also discussed his view of the students, stating: “William & Mary students are often the students who have best been able to negotiate that context. The problem is I don’t know that that necessarily qualifies you to be a critical thinker. But what does it mean to actually spend time teaching critical thinking? It’s time consuming, and it’s often really frustrating for students.”
Riofrio published his first book, Continental Shifts: Migration, Representation, and the Struggle for Justice in Latin(o) America, in 2015. The book examines American discourse about Latinos as to why their right to live equally in the United States is so contested and greatly influences public policy and general perception. Riofrio looks at not just individual and collective identities of Latinos in the United States, but also at their social constructions of an American promise land that is not consistent with their experiences.
Reviewing the book in Choice, R.A. Harper stated: “Writing with specialists in mind, Riofrio engages wide swaths of popular culture and literary criticism.” Harper went on to “recommend” Continental Shifts to researchers and graduate students in the field. Writing in Symploke, Molly Dooley Appel reasoned that “it’s not often that you read a work of literary criticism and think, “this scholar writes with his fingertips on fire,” but John Riofrio gives that impression. Continental Shifts, which argues for a hemispheric analysis of the discursive treatment of Latinos after 9/11, is critically ambitious, highly readable, and furiously passionate. The book engages with a sweeping collection of materials.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Choice, June 1, 2016, R.A. Harper, review of Continental Shifts: Migration, Representation, and the Struggle for Justice in Latin(o) America, p. 1511.
Symploke, 2016, Molly Dooley Appel, review of Continental Shifts, pp. 578-580.
Williamsburg Yorktown Daily, October 29, 2015, “WJCC School Board Berkeley District Q&A: John ‘Rio’ Riofrio.”
ONLINE
College of William and Mary Web site, http://www.wm.edu/ (April 23, 2017), author profile.
Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ (April 23, 2017), author profile.*
John Riofrio
Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies (On Leave Fall 2016)
Office: Washington Hall 207
Phone: (757) 221-3827
Email: jdriofrio@wm.edu
Riofrio honored with Thomas Jefferson Teaching Award
'Riofrio inspires us all'
'Riofrio inspires us all' Latino studies professor John Riofrio is recognized as a first-class scholar, a faculty member whose advice is sought by his colleagues, a teacher credited with "life-changing" experiences by students and a tireless advocate for diversity and tolerance both on campus and in the community. For that, he'll be awarded the Thomas Jefferson Teaching Award on Charter Day. Photo by Stephen Salpukas
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by Cortney Langley | January 27, 2015
To John Riofrio, the day a student walked out of his class in frustration represents as large a teaching victory as the day a quiet conversation led another one to remain in William & Mary and later choose teaching as a career.
That might seem a strange posture for an instructor who during Charter Day will be bestowed the Thomas Jefferson Teaching Award. But it’s a perfectly consistent attitude for the Hispanic studies professor who goes by “Rio” and who daily tries to prod students into challenging intellectual territory.
His efforts will be rewarded on Charter Day, Feb. 6. The award is given annually to a younger faculty member who has demonstrated – through concern as a teacher, character and influence – the inspiration and stimulation of learning to the betterment of the individual and society.
“I'm not a highly awarded anything,” Riofrio said. “This is the first big award I've won, and it's an amazing feeling.”
Hispanic Studies Professor Ann Marie Stock said in a letter of support from the Modern Languages and Literatures Awards Committee that in 2009 the department envisioned hiring a Latino cultural studies specialist mainly to create and offer courses in the emerging field.
“But we gained so much more: a brilliant scholar whose work is shifting paradigms in ethnic and area studies across the hemisphere; a highly effective teacher consistently lauded by his students for ‘life-changing’ experiences and sought out by his colleagues for pedagogical advice and curricular enhancement; and a generous citizen devoted to the greater good. Professor Riofrio inspires us all, and his leadership and collaborative spirit have left us changed,” she said.
Riofrio emphasizes a hemispheric approach to identity politics by examining Latino cultural production, border studies, globalization, immigration and migration, Stock said. Classes such as Border Theory, Constructing the Barrio and Critiquing the American Dream expose students to new perspectives, and they respond enthusiastically in evaluations that rank Riofrio and his classes “well above” the departmental mean.
“It was one of the first classes I had that really required me to think,” wrote Chenoa Moten ’12 in a letter of recommendation. “There was no ‘remember, recite, repeat’ going on in Rio’s classes. He would constantly challenge us to have an opinion and to share it.”
Another student, Jin Hyuk Ho ’16, said the class lit up when Riofrio walked in. “He was genuinely interested in what everyone had to say and, for the first time in my life, I got to experience a classroom in which no student held back his or her thoughts for fear of sounding stupid.”
For his part, Riofrio dodges credit, pointing to the nature of teaching and the students themselves for his success.
“Good teachers are constantly critiquing themselves. One of my advisers once said that good teachers were inherently like thieves: They would see a good idea and steal it, take it for their own classrooms and their own pedagogy. He's absolutely right about that.
“William & Mary is absolutely sincere about its dedication to teaching. I never felt like if I had published two brilliant books in my field and had been a terrible teacher, I would have been able to stay.”
In the classroom Riofrio sparks discussion and sniffs out dissent. If students feel like it’s the first time they are being asked to think deeply about a subject, Riofrio said it’s more a commentary on K-12 education emphasizing standardization than it is on him.
“William & Mary students are often the students who have best been able to negotiate that context. The problem is I don't know that that necessarily qualifies you to be a critical thinker. But what does it mean to actually spend time teaching critical thinking? It's time consuming, and it’s often really frustrating for students.”
Enter the student who exited. Riofrio recalls the class was discussing consumerism, and what it means to live in a country whose economy is dependent on citizens buying all the time. One student argued that “sometimes shopping just feels good,” but balked when asked what generated that good feeling.
“I remember she was upfront that this was so frustrating, that she just felt like, ‘Where's the right answer? Should we buy stuff or not?’
“And that frustration is actually what my classes are about. I don't pretend I have any answers to these things. And our efforts to work through them, to just wrestle with them, was precisely what they hadn't been asked to do in high school. What I love about teaching here is that when they do come to my classroom, almost across the board they are ready to think about these things.”
Students say Riofrio is just as inspiring outside the classroom. Daniel Vivas ’11 had already met with a recruiter, having decided to drop out of school to join his brother in the military, when he went to see Riofrio.
“What was said in that office will stay between him and me,” but the conversation changed his mind, Vivas told the awards committee. Today he’s himself teaching while pursuing a doctorate. “Every day I’ve spent as an educator, I’ve spent it trying to be as good a teacher as [Riofrio], and to be as impactful with my students as he was with me,” he said.
Riofrio denies he has a particularly nurturing demeanor and actually gave up freshman advising because he felt he wasn’t good enough at it.
“Mine is not the kind of office where a steady stream of students comes in to sort of pour their hearts out,” he said. “I don't have a box of Kleenex ready to go. But I care about them, and I respect them.”
On campus, Riofrio is one of the inaugural group of Center for the Liberal Arts Fellows implementing the new COLL curriculum. He sits on the W&M Diversity Advisory Committee and has also served with the Ad Hoc Admissions Committee for Latino Recruitment. In 2011, he organized a national colloquium on minority studies on campus.
His forthcoming book, Continental Shifts: Migration, Representation and the Search for Justice in Latin(o) America, will be released by University of Texas Press this year. He has also published a series of opinion pieces in The Huffington Post.
Off campus, he serves on the board of directors of All Together Williamsburg, a group promoting diversity in the Historic Triangle. He participated in a Virginia Department of Health workshop on Latinos and has co-facilitated public workshops in Williamsburg on Latino immigration.
“I’ve really wanted whatever I do to be relevant, particularly trying to bridge the disconnect between the public perception of Latinos in the United States and the reality,” he said. “There's still an enormous amount of misunderstanding. I feel like my academic work shouldn't be entirely distinct from my role in the community.”
John Riofrio
Associate Professor, College of William and Mary
John Riofrio, who goes by “Rio,” survived his graduate work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, received his PhD in English and is now Assistant Professor of Latin@ Studies in the Hispanic Studies Program in the Department of Modern Languages and Literature at The College of William and Mary. When not negotiating the needs of two teenage stepdaughters and two children under the age of six, Rio is at work on a book manuscript which explores how the demographic shift in Latin@ immigration to the U.S. is changing the way we understand Latin@ literary imagination.
WJCC School Board Berkeley District Q&A: John ‘Rio’ Riofrio
By WYDaily Staff on October 29, 2015
WYDaily.com is your source for free news and information in Williamsburg, James City & York Counties.
John Riofrio (Courtesy John Riofrio)
John Riofrio (Courtesy John Riofrio)
WYDaily sent an identical questionnaire to each candidate running for the Berkeley District seat on the Williamsburg-James City County School Board.
John “Rio” Riofrio faces Sandra Young, both newcomers, in this race. Riofrio’s answers are unedited and presented below.
The election takes place Nov. 3.
Read a completed questionnaire from Young here.
1. What do you feel are the three major issues facing the school district right now? What are your ideas on how to address those issues?
Test anxiety, busses and quality of life for students. Numbers one and three are closely related. I believe we need to take a step back and look at what we expect students to do. They get by with very little recess, they have PE once a week (in Elementary School), their lunch times are often so short that they don’t finish eating their lunch, they are often in their seats for long periods of time. These things absolutely should change. We should not be cutting recess and we should push hard to figure out how the bus situation contributes to these problems. For example: my elementary-aged kids start school at 9:10 because the buses are in use before then. What if all schools started at 8:30? In the case of my kids, the extra 40 minutes could be used to give them a short morning recess, a longer more relaxed lunch (time to just hang out and chat with friends) and coul even offer a short block of time for remediation work, or to get some of their homework done before going home. I’m not convinced that we’ve handled the bus system effectively.
2. Population data suggests that WJCC will need a fourth middle school to accommodate students in the coming years. What do you think of the school division’s plan to build a new middle school on the campus of James Blair Middle School? Would you support the project’s progress in future budgets?
I think it’s an acceptable solution to a very complicated problem. It is not a perfect solution but my understanding is that the county has not done a good job of buying land for the use of schools which has resulted in our county being forced to put schools in where we happen to have some land rather than thinking ahead proactively. I believe that the process that has taken place so far was done with the input of the community and was done in good faith. To go back now on the middle school plan seems to me a very bad idea. The numbers clearly show the need for another school and delaying it another four or five years means that we’ll pay even more money. Furthermore, I think the idea to simply expand existing schools by using our classrooms more efficiently (as Petra Nadal suggested) does not solve the problem. It’s possible that you could fit extra students into the supposedly empty or half-filled classroom but what about common spaces like the library, the auditorium or the cafeteria? Students already eat at ridiculous times because there’s not enough space in the cafeteria (my 6th grade daughter eat lunch at 10:30am. If we add more students to her school does that mean some will have to eat at 10:00?
3. The WJCC school division budget for FY 2016 was $4 million short of the amount it requested from the City of Williamsburg and James City County. What budget items would you want to ensure are fully funded and not cut back if WJCC schools faces a similar budget situation in FY 2017?
I believe we need to fully fund our Arts programs and our support staff. As we cut necessary positions like special needs instructors, reading specialists, or school counselors we end up essentially “passing the buck” to the classroom teachers who are left trying to be everything to all students. We need to take the focus off our obsession with testing and test results and ensure that kids are able to take the classes that bring them joy (PE, Art, Music etc).
4. The WJCC school board has discussed starting the school day later for middle and high school students. Do you support later start times for these students? Why or why not?
I absolutely support later start times for both middle and high school. All of the most current researcher suggests that middle and high school students do better when they sleep in, that they are in better cognitive shape. I’d like for us to figure out what we can do with the bus situation to make something like later start times a reality.
5. Which school improvement projects do you think need to be priority items for the school division? Why?
I see two main areas: the first has to do with the physical maintenance of buildings. We need to continue to ensure that we are not cutting corners on our buildings so that repairs and expenses don’t become more of an issue. The second one, however, is more transcendent. I believe that we should think about teacher support as an “improvement” project. Administrators, rather than being free to mentor teachers are often absorbed by disciplinary issues. Teachers are finding themselves overwhelmed and riddled with anxiety over the burden of testing. I’d like us to talk closely to teachers to figure out what they need to be more successful. Do they need support staff that can handle remedial learners? Do they need support to work with students with special needs? Do they need funding to pursue lessons that will enrich and inspire their students? Put more broadly, I believe we need to pay more attention to what teachers need in order to do their jobs better.
6. Talk about the achievement gap in WJCC Schools. Are the current strategies to close the gap working? Why or why not? What are your ideas to help progress in this area?
The achievement gap here in the county is not an isolated problem. It is a national problem, one that has multiple sources. We need to look closely at who is teaching our most needy students. Are these students, our struggling students, getting the attention of our best teachers? Are our disciplinary policies hurting or helping them overcome their obstacles. One small example of this would be to ask whether the use of out-of-school suspension are useful or if they are making an academic problem worse. We also, however, need to look beyond the classroom. Has our school system done enough to work with the parents of struggling students? Have we figured out what these parents need to feel supported and also hopeful? Success is often a subtle thing, our outlook on life and our ability to cope with adversity are often products of deep and complicated issues: our race, our gender, our family history. To make a serious effort to close the achievement gap we have to be willing to ask tough questions of ourselves as parents, as educators, as administrators and as a school system, and we have to ask ourselves if we have, in fact, been making a full commitment to closing that gap. I believe we need to spend much more time and attention supporting the parents of struggling students but also their teachers.
7. How would you describe the working relationship between the school board and the Board of Supervisors? What can the school board do to improve or enhance this relationship?
I think that, in general, there is a solid working relationship. However, I am concerned about the Board of Supervisor’s reticence to fully fund the school district the last several budget cycles. Without having been involved in the discussions, this leads me to believe that the Board of Supervisors is, perhaps, not understanding the enormous role that the school system plays in the economic well-being of our county. I believe that constant dialog is important and that both boards need to be willing to listen to each other carefully, but beyond that, I think the school board needs to do a better job of making its case for the ways in which it contributes to the county’s overall well-being.
8. How well do you feel the school board members work together? What do you feel you can bring to the school board’s dynamic?
Everything I have seen suggests that, up until now, the school board has managed to set aside partisan ideologies to work together effectively to set policy and to work through the budget proposal. I believe that my ability to work well with folks with whom I disagree, my ability as a careful, critical listener, my life-long experience in all levels of education will all be assets as I seek to make our school system stronger.
Berkeley District School Board Race 2015, Candidate Questionnaire 2015, Election 2015, John Rio Riofrio, Sandy Young, WJCC School Board Race 2015
Harper, R.A. "Riofrio, John D.: Continental shifts: migration, representation, and the struggle for justice in Latin(o) America." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, June 2016, p. 1511. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA454942849&it=r. Accessed 12 Apr. 2017.
Appel, Molly Dooley. "Continental Shifts: Migration, Representation, and the Struggle for Justice in Latin(o) America." symploke, vol. 24, no. 1-2, 2016, p. 578+. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA480453840&it=r. Accessed 12 Apr. 2017.
Continental Shifts: Migration, Representation, and the Struggle for Justice in Latin(o) America by John D. “Rio” Riofrio (review)
Molly Dooley Appel
From: symploke
Volume 24, Numbers 1-2, 2016
pp. 578-580
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:
Reviewed by
Molly Dooley Appel
John D. “Rio” Riofrio. Continental Shifts: Migration, Representation, and the Struggle for Justice in Latin(o) America. Austin: U of Texas P, 2015. 214 pp.
It’s not often that you read a work of literary criticism and think, “this scholar writes with his fingertips on fire,” but John Riofrio gives that impression. Continental Shifts, which argues for a hemispheric analysis of the discursive treatment of Latinos after 9/11, is critically ambitious, highly readable, and furiously passionate. The book engages with a sweeping collection of materials, threading novels and films with YouTube vlogs, police department websites, popular crime shows, and The Onion. The broad swath of material might seem fractured, but in many ways parallels the shifting, clashing ground that functions as the central metaphor of his book. As he explains it, “Continental Shifts envisions the two hemispheres as sliding toward each other on unseen tectonic plates and folding inward, like an enormous continental origami, such that what was once considered separate and distinct has been forced to mutual acknowledgement. My title is thus meant to invoke a theoretical grounding that sees the two hemispheres as more intimately entwined demographically, culturally, and ideologically” (12). He identifies a number of post-9/11 shifts that have wrought this damaging discursive representation; mainly: the shifting realities of the location of latinidad and the neoliberally-driven idea of deviance coded within latinidad as a personal moral failing. Triangulating himself within the critical work of Arlene Dávila, Juan Poblote, Sophia McClennen, and Henry Giroux, as well as the philosophical work of Habermas, Butler, and Foucault, Riofrio’s project is a fiercely interdisciplinary work of cultural studies crafted with the tools of literary analysis.
He builds his argument with a reading of Jorge Franco’s Paraíso Travel and Alberto Fuguet’s Películas de mi vida in Chapter 1. These novels have a role in conceptualizing Latino experience in the U.S. “because they help break the stranglehold that our obsession with undocumented ‘Mexican’ migration has had on our collective understanding of migration and immigration…. The impetus to see all Latino migration as both undocumented and ‘Mexican’ produces a context in which all Mexicans are poor and undocumented and all Latinos are categorically understood as already criminal” (39). While acknowledging the divergent history of Latino/a Studies and Latin American Studies, he argues that latinidad must be examined in this broader context in order to combat the trend of erasing the complexity of migrant populations by coding them all as destitute and desperate. Riofrio suggests that these novels emulate the ways that “Latino” has come to indicate not a racial, socio-ethnic, or geographic grouping, but rather a grouping of bodies “buffeted by forces connected to the distinct social contexts they try to inhabit” (63)—namely, neoliberalism and U.S. neo-imperialism. “Migration,” he argues, “is a broad social process that does not discriminate, perse, among social classes, race, or gender. It affects everyone. Further, migration moves even those who have [End Page 578] never left home” (62). While this theoretical move has the effect of detaching latinidad from its historical employment, it also detaches the “Latino/a” and “migrant” from metonymy for the victimized, impoverished other.
Riofrio’s next two chapters take on “The Dirty Politics of Representation” (Chapter 2) in the public sphere followed by the way in which “Spectacles of Incarceration” (Chapter 3) serve to reinforce the neoliberal rubric of dehumanization upon which those dirty politics are built. Here, Riofrio makes a subtle shift from focusing on Latino/a as a discursive category to the actual brown and black bodies that overwhelm both the targets of this discourse and the prison system. He points to the way that a teenager’s highly-viewed YouTube vlog, during which he rages about being called Mexican, exemplifies the complexity and altered nature of the public sphere. “What is striking about watching [Chaz] Hernandez talk through the issues of homogenization and labeling (while never addressing them as such) is just how difficult it becomes for him to negotiate the frustration he feels about being labeled Mexican and the sense that to reject the label puts him in close...