Jessica Retis, PhD
2025 Graduate Teaching and Mentoring Award
Professor Retis joined the University of Arizona in 2019. That year she was awarded the Provost Investment Fund (PIF) to launch the M.A. in Bilingual Journalism, Cultural Competence and Innovation. In 2021 she was awarded the title of Center for University Education Scholarship, CUES Distinguished Fellow for her research project “Bilingual Journalism Education in the United States: Development, Implementation and Assessment.”
Due to her interdisciplinary work, Dr. Retis holds a dual courtesy appointment with the UA Center for Latin American Studies Department and the Graduate Program in Human Rights Practice. Before joining the University of Arizona, she worked for a decade at California State University Northridge (CSUN) where she taught a wide range of courses from lecture to skills classes at undergraduate and graduate levels, both in English and Spanish. Her innovative pedagogies have been recognized with several awards such as the State-level CSU Distinguished Teaching Award (2019), and the campus recognition CSUN’s Polished Apple Award (awarded twice, in 2009 and 2013). For many years she has trained bilingual journalists currently working in various newsrooms in the U.S. and abroad.
Dr. Retis maintains an active research agenda. For the last two decades, she has studied international migrations, transnational communities and the news media in Europe (Spain and UK), North America (United States), Asia (Japan), and Latin America (Brazil and Peru). She places her findings within a larger theoretical, intersectional and interdisciplinary framework, shedding light in particular on issues of territoriality, hybridization and heterogeneity; the last introducing issues of gender, race and class. Her areas of research include Latin America, international migration, diasporas and transnational communities; cultural industries; ethnic media; diversity and the media; Latino media in Europe, North America and Asia; bilingual journalism, journalism studies, and journalism education.