John Ochoa

John Ochoa is an Associate Professor of Spanish at the Pennsylvania State University, affiliated with the College of Liberal Arts and the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. He holds a PhD from Yale University (1999) and previously served as Associate Professor at the University of California, Riverside. His research focuses on Mexican literature and intellectual history, comparative literature, postcolonial theory, and culinary history. Current projects explore American exceptionalism through comparative U.S. and Latin American texts.

Key publications include The Uses of Failure in Mexican Literature and Identity (2005), analyzing failure's role in national identity, and Bitácora del cruce (2006), an edited anthology of Guillermo Gómez-Peña's work. He has received the Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship (2001-02).

• Teaching interests: Latin American and Latinx literature, colonial studies, performance art
• Research areas: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Chicano performance, transnational narratives

His interdisciplinary work bridges literary analysis with social issues, including public health studies on cancer screening disparities among Hispanic populations in Pennsylvania.