Professor Ruiz-Mendoza specializes in twentieth and twenty-first centuries Latin American literature, cinema, media, and performance, with an emphasis on contemporary cultural production of South and Central America. His work has been published in Hispanófila, Revista de Estudios Colombianos, A Contracorriente, Perífrasis, and Estudios de Literatura Colombiana. Prior to joining Mizzou, he taught upper-level Spanish courses on Latin American literature and film at the University of Michigan, where he completed his PhD in 2022.