Biography
Jaime Guzmán’s work focuses on gentrification studies, interrogating this process from the interdisciplinary perspective of communication studies, urban studies, and critical race. In the classroom, he aims to create a space where students can deconstruct the taken-for-granted notions in our society while paying close attention to the influences of the systemic on the individual. His classes look at communication from a critical perspective. Dr. Jaime Guzmán joined the Department of Communication Studies asan Assistant Professor in the Fall 2021.
As a proud son of East Los Angeles, Jaime gained an interested in the field of Communication Studies while taking classes at California State University, Los Angeles. There he attained his B.A. and M.A. in Communication Studies with an emphasis in Rhetoric and Social Change in 2012 and 2014 respectively. He then completed his PhD at the University of Denver with an emphasis in Communication and Culture in 2018. It was during this time that Dr. Guzmán found an interest in studying gentrification since he was seeing the ways this process was being implemented in neighborhoods like East LA all around the greater Los Angeles. This is why he is currently studying the ongoing struggles against gentrification in the Eastside of Los Angeles. Namely he is interested in viewing gentrification as a whiteness project; meaning that gentrification can best be understood as a strategically designed process employed to push out predominantly working-class communities of color at a local and global level for the benefit of a white (physically and/or economically) incoming population.
Beyond scholarship, Dr. Jaime Guzmán has an extensive background in teaching. Having been an educator in a variety of classroom environments (from high school to community college, and private and public university settings). Specifically, he has taught classes like Intercultural Communication, Communication Theory, Critical Race Theory, Feminism and Communication, Rhetorical Communication, Communication and Pop Culture, and Public Speaking.