Research
Hernández specializes in transnational feminism and the sexual economies of the U.S.–Mexico borderlands, working across American literary studies and empire, archival studies, Marxist theory, border and migration theory, and Chicana/Latina literature and sexualities. Her current book project, Chicana Marxism, extends this work; she is also co-founder of the Fronteristxs Collective, a border art and writer collective.
Transnational Feminism & Sexual Capital
Sexual capital anchors her work — not a commodity sold and traded, but the unseen labor ofracialized sexuality that produced wealth and governed women's bodies across the changing American Southwest, crossing and constituting borders.
American Literary History & Empire
Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American literature read through empire — including recovery work on María Amparo Ruiz de Burton and the literary-legal documents that redrew territory after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
Chicana / Latina Literatures & Sexualities
Chicanx and Latinx literature and culture, with attention to gender, sexuality, and the archive — from Anzaldúa to contemporary borderlands writing.
In the archive
Archival research spans collections across the country, including the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley and the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection Rare Books and Manuscripts archive at UT Austin.
