Yessica Garcia Hernandez

Yessica Garcia Hernandez is Assistant Professor of Latinx Sexualities, Popular Culture, and Performance Studies in the Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies. She is also an award-winning ethnographic filmmaker, humanistic social scientist, and critical autoethnographer. Her research examines how Latinx and Mexican communities use vulgar performances as feminist rebellion and ways to refuse respectability and assimilationist politics. Her first book project, Vulgar Feminisms: Jenni Rivera and the Erotics of her Immigrant Fandom is currently under contract with Duke University Press and dives into the gendered and classed politics of Mexican regional music by examining the paisa girl subculture through the career of late Chicana singer Jenni Rivera. She argues that Rivera and her fans co-created a sex-positive space that is deliberate about living vulgar sensualities as erotic freedom. Expanding the study of vulgar pleasures, her future book manuscripts focus on the representation, labor, and reception of Latinas in the pornographic archive, fat Latina sexual economies and cultural production and Paisa Party Crews in southern California, particularly Long Beach, California. Dr. Garcia Hernandez’ work is published or forthcoming in journals such Women Studies Quarterly; Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies; Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory; The Journal of Porn Studies; Journal of Fat Studies; GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies; Fashion, Style and Popular Culture; Transformative Works and Culture; New American Notes Online; Journal of Popular Music and So Sounding Out! Her work has also been published in groundbreaking anthologies like Sex Work Today, Contemporary Issues of People of Color: Surviving and Thriving in the U.S, and Public Scholarship blogs like Imagining America.

Garcia-Hernandez, Yessica. 2024. “The “Big Beautiful Women” Awards: Fat Latinas in the Porn Industry” in Sex Work Today: Erotic Labor in the 21st Century. New York; New York UniversityPress, 94-107.

Garcia-Hernandez, Yessica. 2024. “Queering paisa style: The chunti style of buchonas, queer rancheros and Paisaboys.” Fashion, Style & Popular Culture. September:1-23. https://doi.org/10.1386/fspc_00249_1

Garcia-Hernandez, Yessica. 2023.“Border Trash: The Marking of Latinas as Foreign Bodies.” Women and Performance: A journal of feminist theory. 32(3):1-23.

Garcia-Hernandez, Yessica. 2021. “The Making of Fat Erotics: The Cultural Work and Pleasures of Gordibuena Activist.” Journal of Fat Studies. 10(3), 237-252.

Garcia-Hernandez, Yessica. 2021. “Longing for Fat Futures: Creating Fat Utopian Performatives in Burlesque.” Frontiers: Journal of Women Studies. 41.3, 107-129.

Garcia-Hernandez, Yessica. 2020. “The Pornographic Grammar of the Vocal Latinx Body.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies. 26(3): 590-596.

Garcia-Hernandez, Yessica. 2019. “Latina Fans Agitate Respectability: Rethinking Anti-Fans and Anti-Fandom.” In Transformative Works and Culture. No. 29.

Garcia-Hernandez, Yessica. 2018. “Eye Fucking the Camera Lens: Listening to the Erotic Noise of Boudoir Photography.” In So Sounding out!

Garcia-Hernandez, Yessica. 2017. “Unapologetic Paisa Chingona-ness: Listening to Fans’ Sonic Identities.” In So Sounding out!

Garcia-Hernandez, Yessica. 2016. “Intoxication as a Feminist Pleasure: Drinking, Dancing, and Un-Dressing for/with Jenni Rivera.” New American Notes Online. New York City College of Technology. Issue 9.

Garcia-Hernandez, Yessica. 2016. “Sonic Pedagogies: Latina Girls, Mother-Daughter Relationships, and Learning Feminisms through Consumption of Jenni Rivera.” Journal of Popular Music. 28 (4):427-442.

Paisa Culture Studies

Chicanx/Latinx Cultural Studies

Racialized Sexuality

Performance Studies

Fat Studies

Critical Girl Studies

Popular Music

Sex Work, Sex Ed, and Adult Industry

Race and Pornography

Fan Studies

Women of Color Feminisms

Queer of Color Critique

Autoethnographic Methodologies

Working-Class Epistemologies

Film Ethnography

Digital Humanities

PhD, Ethnic Studies, University of California, San Diego

MA, Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies, California State University, Los Angeles

BA, Chicana/o and Ethnic Studies, University of California, Riverside

AA, Philosophy, Long Beach City College

Undergraduate

• Barrio Popular Culture
• Latinx Sexualities
• Chicana Feminisms
• Latina Girlhood Studies
• Performance Studies
• Race and Pornography
• Autoethnographic Methods

Graduate

• Latinx Sexual Economies
• Film Ethnography
• Latinx Cultural Studies
• Demystifying Professor-ing
• Writing the Academic Article