“The Pizza & Research event series is fundamental to our library’s mission to foster a vibrant intellectual community on campus,” said Dean Hendricks, UTSA vice provost and dean of university libraries. “By providing a platform for diverse voices like Dr. Cruz to share their original research and creative scholarship, students, faculty and staff can engage in meaningful dialogue and connect research and real-world applications. We can bridge the gap.”
Pizza & Research is free and open to UTSA students, faculty and staff. Pizza is available while supplies last. This event will be held on Tuesday, October 15th from noon to 1pm in the John Peace Library Assembly Room (JPL 4.04.22).
Cruise has spent much of his life overcoming personal trauma and navigating the challenges of a music education and music industry shaped primarily by white male perspectives.
She believes that her position in UTSA’s Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (REGSS) program has given her a unique opportunity to introspectively explore and discover both her musical and personal identities. I believe it was given to me.
Without this program, “I might have been limited by the traditional boundaries of performance and composition and continued to focus solely on the technical and aesthetic aspects of music,” she said.
She continued: “REGSS changed my understanding of music. It opened my eyes to the fact that music is more than just an art form. It is a living archive, a form of resistance. , a way to express the complex human experience that reflects the interconnectedness of social struggle, individual identity, and collective memory, and that reveals much more than we would have discovered had we not taken a step beyond the study of music. It is an art form, not a custodian of culture or heritage.”
She holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Notre Dame, a Master of Music degree and a Doctorate of Musical Arts degree from the University of Texas at Austin. As a leading figure in Mexican American music studies, she earned the university’s BA in Mexican American Studies and has been instrumental in building a unique concentration in Mexican American music. Introduced in fall 2022, this concentration paves the way for future activist scholars to use music as a tool for social change.
Cruz’s dedication to preserving and celebrating the contributions of Chicanas/xs as well as femme and gender non-conforming musicians shines through her original compositions and transcriptions. She created an archive containing digitized recordings, transcriptions, and notations, ensuring the immortalization of these voices that are too often left out of mainstream narratives. Seamlessly weaving prose and song, her style of presenting this creative scholarship elevates the stories of those who are often marginalized or forgotten.
Cruz, a first-generation college graduate, is the award-winning author of The Art of Mariachi: A Curriculum Guide (Conocimientos Press). Cruz’s work as a passionate singer, songwriter, and scholar has fostered a deep appreciation for the diversity and complexity of Mexican American music, culture, and traditions, and established him as a leading figure in the field. I did.
