Associate Professor

American Literary Studies

Director of American Literary Studies

Affiliate of the Latin American & Iberian Institute

Research Areas

19th and early 20th century American Literature and Empire, Chicanx and Latinx Literature, Critical Gender and Sexuality Studies, Immigration and Border Studies, Marxist Theory

Contact Information

Email: berna18@unm.edu
Office Location: Parsih Library B01-CU15

Biography

Dr. Bernadine Hernández is an associate professor in the Department of English at the University of New Mexico. She specializes in transnational feminism and sexual economies of the US-Mexico borderlands, along with American Literary Studies and Empire, border and migration history, Marxist theory, and Chicana/Latina Literature and Sexualities. Dr. Hernández’s 2022 book Border Bodies: Racialized Sexuality, Sexual Capital, and Violence in the Nineteenth Century Borderlands (UNC Press) has won the 2024 NACCS (National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies) Book of the Year Award, the 2024 AAHHE (American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education) Book of the Year Award, and the 2023 Honorable Mention for the NWSA (National Women’s Studies Association) Gloría Anzaldúa Book Award. She is also the co-editor of the first edited collection on Ana Castillo titled New Transnational Chicanx Perspectives on Ana Castillo, published with the University of Pittsburgh Press in Spring 2021. Her other publications appear in Comparative Literature and Culture, Transgender Studies Quarterly, and Women’s Studies Quarterly, among others.

She is also a public-facing scholar and works with the artist and writer collective fronteristxs, a collective of artists and writers in New Mexico working to end migrant detention and abolish the prison industrial complex through creative activism. Fronteristas provides free political education for the community and youth throughout New Mexico on transformative justice and abolition. 

Personal Website