Racialized Sexuality, Sexual Capital, and Violence in the Nineteenth-Century Borderlands
In this study of sex, gender, sexual violence, and power along the border, Hernández brings to light under-heard stories of women who lived in a critical era of American history. Elaborating on the concept of sexual capital, she uses little-known newspapers and periodicals, letters, testimonios, court cases, short stories, and photographs to reveal how sex, violence, and capital conspired to govern not only women's bodies but their role in the changing American Southwest.
The first book-length study to focus on sexual capital and gender and sexual violence in the borderlands in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through recovered archival work. University of North Carolina Press, 2022.
Recognition
OVPR Ovation Award for Research & Scholarship — UNM, 2024
Book of the Year, National Association of Chicana & Chicano Studies (NACCS), 2024
Mid-Career Book of the Year, American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education (AAHHE), 2024
Honorable Mention, Gloria Anzaldúa Book Award, National Women's Studies Association (NWSA), 2023
In the press
Because it traces the sexual history of the U.S.–Mexico border, the book has been taken up by news outlets and podcasts — including New Mexico in Focus (NM PBS), Unsung History, and From the Margins — exploring the ties between the economy, reproductive autonomy, and the lives of women of color on the border.
also from Dr. Hernández
Transnational Chicanx Perspectives on Ana Castillo
Co-edited with Karen Roybal
The first edited collection devoted to the celebrated Chicana writer Ana Castillo, this volume gathers scholars across disciplines to reconsider her poetry, fiction, essays, and art through transnational and hemispheric frames — tracing Castillo's influence on Chicana feminism, Xicanisma, and Latinx literary studies.
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021.
