Publications

Recent publications include "La Rose" for the Routledge Companion to Latine Theatre and Performance (2024) and as co-author of the Routledge Performance Practitioner's Series on Luis Valdez (2024).

A recent scholarship award remarked how “In explaining how ‘antagonistic empathy’ functions, Rocha offers an account of how familiarity through media can sustain both feeling and violence. Feeling often obscures violence, something that endures in the Americas and elsewhere… The discussion of Latinidad in 19C theatre history is an under-emphasized area, making this an important contribution.”

His current book project, Selling the Sensation—Latinidad, Latines, and Magical Materialism in Early US Theatre, examines the onset of Latine representations in nineteenth-century and early‐twentieth-century US theatre. Critical engagements with unknown historical accounts examine how representations of Latinidad in 19th-20th century US theatre influenced our culture's ethos surrounding Latinx/e peoples.

Contributor, Routledge Companion to Latinx Theatre and Performance (May 2024), edited by Olga Sanchez Saltveit and Noe Montez, “La Rose, Broadway, 1906 and San Juan Bautista, 1981" is in the book's Part Two, History/Presence: link  

Co-Author with Jorge Huerta, Jade Power-Sotomayor, Gullermo Aviles-Rodriguez, and Karina Gutierrez, Routledge Performance Practitioners Series: Luis Valdez (August 2024), “Valdezian Journeys—A practical means of exploring performance.”  https://www.routledge.com/Luis-Valdez/Huerta-Aviles-Rodriguez-Gutierrez-Power-Sotomayor-Rocha/p/book/9781032496696

Author, Theatre Survey (Cambridge University Press, peer-reviewed), May 2022 publication “Greasers, Bandidos, and Squatters Under Duress: Performing Latinidad in 1858 California” https://www.doi.org/10.1017/S0040557422000060

2023 Gerald Kahan Scholar’s Prize (Honorable Mention) from the American Society for Theatre Research 

Reviewer, Performance Shakespeare 2016 (website), Early Modern Digital Review (peer-reviewed), 2021 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/emdr/article/view/37582

Forthcoming: Contributor, Anthology of the Frida Kahlo 10-Minute Theater Festival, edited by Sinergia Theatre Group- Grupo de Teatro Sinergia (2025). Props 38s, by Ricardo Rocha.  

Forthcoming: Reviewer, Latinx Actor Training (2024), edited by Cynthia Santos and Micha Espinosa, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism