Remembering Ricardo Ortiz: Educator, Friend and Hoya for Others

Ricardo Ortiz's unique, infectious laugh regularly filled the hallways and classrooms at Georgetown University. It's one of the many things his colleagues and students will miss most about him.

Ortiz, a beloved faculty member in the College of Arts & Sciences and celebrated scholar of Latinx literature, queer theory and gender studies, died Aug. 18 in DC. He was 63.

For many, Ortiz, who worked at Georgetown for over 25 years, was more than a colleague or professor, he was their lifeline on campus. Ortiz exuded positivity and built community wherever he went. And his laugh lit up rooms. His friends have described it as loud, resonant, jovial, contagious and inclusive.

"He had this chuckle that he did, sort of like a, 'ha, ha, ha,' almost like Santa," Amanda Phillips, an associate professor of English, said of Ortiz's laugh. "He had dimples, and he was a good looking person. It was like all of his features were oriented towards joy."

"There were different versions of the Ricardo laugh but all of them were part of the same jovial, generous outlook on life," said Brian Hochman, the Hubert J. Cloke Director of American Studies. "He was an immensely positive person, which I think rubbed off on a lot of us."

It was among the ways that Ortiz sought to bring people together.

"Whatever he was laughing at, we were included in that laughter," said Elizabeth Velez, a professional lecturer in the Women's and Gender Studies Program.

"I think a lot about his laughter, because he was so joyful," said Sonia Valencia (G'12), one of Ortiz's former students in the Community Scholars Program who graduated with a Master of Arts in English. "He just had a unique laugh and it was infectious, and he brought light and joy into every space."

'A Huge Presence'

It's hard to find a pocket of Georgetown where Ortiz wasn't involved.

At the time of his passing, he was the director of the Master of Arts in Engaged & Public Humanities program, which he took over in July 2022. Ortiz began teaching at Georgetown in the fall of 1998 and served as the chair of the English department from 2015 to 2021. He taught courses across departments and programs in English, American studies, comparative literature, performing arts and women's and gender studies.

Ortiz also regularly taught in the Community Scholars Program for first-generation students and was a member or chair of several committees. He won numerous faculty awards. Georgetown recently set up the Ricardo L. Ortiz Humanities Fund to honor his memory and support the work to which he dedicated his life.

"In many ways, I think he was a model College faculty member," said David Edelstein, the dean of the College of Arts & Sciences. "People aren't going to forget that, and I think they will draw upon that memory to inspire themselves going forward in terms of how they'll teach our students and act towards each other within our community."

As a first-generation college student, Ortiz, who was born in Cuba and immigrated to Southern California with his parents at a young age, was particularly drawn to serving underrepresented and fellow first-generation students.

He was affiliated and allied with programs, clubs and initiatives like the Georgetown Scholars Program, La Casa Latina, MEChA de Georgetown, the LGBTQ Resource Center, the Gender⁺ Justice Initiative, and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.

"Ricardo was a huge presence at Georgetown, because he loved this institution and its students, and he believed in - and enjoyed - being involved in academic programs," said Sherry Linkon, a professor of English and American Studies.

Ortiz found connections across the university.

"Professors in departments, we stay in our own lanes," Velez said. "But Ricardo created overlapping spaces … I think he took Georgetown's mission [of cura personalis] as seriously as anyone ever has at Georgetown."

'A Fierce Advocate'

Students often turned to Ortiz for mentorship and colleagues looked up to him as a role model.

Angie Bonilla (C'09), one of Ortiz's former students who graduated from the College with a major in English and minor in Spanish, said she is the researcher, educator and scholar she is today because of Ortiz.

A chancellor's postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Latina/Latino Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Bonilla wants people to remember Ortiz's advocacy work for first-generation students and contributions to Latinx studies as a queer and Cuban literary and cultural critic.

"I want people to remember the fierce love he had for his many homelands - California, the Caribbean and DC," Bonilla said. "I want people to remember how he was a humanist at the core, a fierce advocate for the unfinished and necessary work of protecting and cultivating the humanities in higher education."

Ortiz saw potential in each student, regardless of their background.

At one point while writing her master's thesis, Valencia told him that she didn't belong at Georgetown. She compared herself to her peers who had already finished their work and felt her classmates were smarter than her.

Ortiz quickly and gently shut down those thoughts.

"I didn't have the language for this at the time, but I was, at moments, struggling with imposter syndrome," said Valencia, who is the director of the TRIO Scholars Program at UC Irvine. "And he reassured me of the fact that I did belong there, and that I had great ideas."

He treated colleagues the same way.

Mireya Loza, an associate professor in the Department of History and the American Studies Program, knew a lot about Ortiz and his work with Latinx literature before she arrived at Georgetown in 2020. She had read his writing and taught it in her classes.

Ortiz, Loza said, was a brilliant literary scholar who oozed generosity. He constantly uplifted others through compliments and wanted the people around him to feel valued.

"He had a lot more experience at Georgetown than I did and had a large profile as a scholar," she said. "And I just remember countless interactions where he not only made me feel like we were peers, but he also, at times, made me feel like I was teaching him something."

'A Sense of Mission'

As a scholar, Ortiz wrote two books on Latinx studies and dozens of academic works that covered topics in the humanities. He was an expert in Latinx literature and cultures and often analyzed it through the lenses of gender and sexuality.

"He was knowledgeable about all Latino literature," Loza said. "In ethnic studies, especially for communities that are very large and complex, it's hard to find scholars that actually understand the complexity of entire swaths of people, not just like one corner or one group, but he was one of those people."

Joshua Javier Guzmán (SFS '10), an associate professor in the Department of Gender Studies at UCLA, said that he is an academic because of Ortiz. Guzmán first met Ortiz the summer before his first year at Georgetown as a Community Scholar, and Ortiz was one of the program's instructors.

Guzmán took Ortiz's Testimonial Fictions course as his first elective at Georgetown, and learning from Ortiz inspired Guzmán to become a professor himself.

"What Ricardo made me realize early on about the profession was that it was a social world, and that these were not just like dead writers that were scholars that we were reading in class, but actually alive," Guzmán said. "A lot of them were his friends or he knew them and that you can know them too."

As a professor, Ortiz fostered curiosity, Guzmán said. He taught with rigor and emboldened students to expand their worlds.

"When he gets you, he'll give you these little nuggets, something to latch on, and when you latch on, he pushes you: Go read this. Go look at that thing. Go look that up," Guzmán said. "It was sort of like pushing you out in the world."

More recently, Ortiz devoted much of his time to the Master of Arts in Engaged & Public Humanities program, where he served as director.

Kathryn D. Temple, a professor of law and humanities in the Department of English and the founding director of the master's program from 2019 to 2021, credits Ortiz with increasing the program's impact by managing real, high impact internships, developing a core faculty and recruiting students interested in the humanities to join.

"The year we launched the program, we were coming out of COVID and dealing with all the issues everyone was dealing with," Temple said. "After that, everything that I had dreamed and hoped for regarding that program, he brought into being."

"He immediately came into that leadership role with a joy and eagerness to grow it," said Michelle May-Curry, core faculty for the master's program.

Ortiz was a program builder, said Patrick O'Malley, the chair of the English department.

"I think that it was in part his belief in the value and the importance of the work," O'Malley said. "He deeply believed in the importance of the humanities, of English studies, of Latinx studies, of queer studies, of graduate studies, and he had a sense of mission for those that he thought that if no one else was doing it, it had to be done, and so it would be him."

'Unashamed Joy'

Ortiz loved talking about films, books and television shows - particularly reality TV.

"We'd talk about pop culture as well as high brown literature in the same breath and with the same seriousness," Valencia said.

And he enjoyed all of those things equally and unironically.

"There was a kind of open and unashamed joy in what he did, in what he was reading, in what he was writing, in what his students were doing," O'Malley said. "We'd have conversations where he would be totally fascinated and interested and enthusiastic in reality television or the novels of Jacqueline Susann - some things you might think that academics would brush off, but Ricardo had a real, authentic, totally unironic pleasure in these."

Ortiz could also be playful - in his personality but also with his writing. "Like the way he played with words," Valencia said. "The way he stretched language to really invite you to have that relationship with language where you know that it's something that's alive, something that can be stretched with multiple meanings."

He noticed things about the world around him and took time to soak it in. Even walking to the bus stop after class, Ortiz would sometimes stop and take a picture of the sunset on campus to post on social media.

"I think his capacity for being alive was profound," Velez said. "Every experience mattered to him."

Ortiz is survived by his partner, Paul O'Neill; sisters, Ana and Ana; nephews, Colin, Andrew and Daniel; and niece, Isabella.

In remembrance of Ortiz, gifts may be sent to:

The Ricardo L. Ortiz Humanities Fund
The College of Arts & Sciences
Georgetown University
Department 0734
Washington, DC 20073-0734

Gifts may be made online at: give.georgetown.edu/RicardoOrtiz