Denise Cruz

Denise Cruz is a scholar of Asian American and American literature, the culture and history of the Philippines, and gender and sexuality studies. Her research covers a range of subjects, from connections between the rise of English literature and women's suffrage in Manila, to the vibrant world of Filipino high fashion, to the strategies Asian American authors use to represent regional, national, and transnational communities. She is the author of Transpacific Femininities: the Making of the Modern Filipina (Duke University Press, 2012) and the editor of Yay Panlilio Marking's The Crucible: An autobiography of Colonel Yay. Her articles and essays have appeared in American Quarterly, PMLA, Modern Fiction Studies, American Literature, American Literary History, and the Journal of Asian American Studies. Her research on fashion history in the Philippines has been supported by a multi-year Insight grant from Canada's Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. 

Cruz has spent over a decade developing the humanities classroom as a space of dynamic learning and critical engagement. This approach stems from her experience as an undergraduate student at UCLA who was once a science major, before she fell in love with medieval literature in a large lecture. She has received teaching awards from the University of Toronto, Indiana University, and Columbia, where she was the recipient of the Lenfest Teaching Award, the Mark Van Doren and Presidential Teaching Awards in 2021, and the Society of Columbia Graduates' Great Teacher Award (2024). A former chair of the Department of English and Comparative Literature, she currently serves as Director of Strategic Initiatives in the Arts and Sciences, where she focuses on efforts related to undergraduate education and experience.