Research Bio

Juana María Rodríguez is a cultural critic, public speaker, and award-winning author who writes about sexual cultures, racial politics, and the many tangled expressions of Latina identity. A Professor of Ethnic Studies; Gender and Women’s Studies, and Performance Studies at UC Berkeley, she is the author of Puta Life: Seeing Latinas, Working Sex (Duke UP 2023); Sexual Futures, Queer Gestures, and Other Latina Longings (NYU Press 2014); and Queer Latinidad: Identity Practices, Discursive Spaces (NYU Press, 2003). She also served as a co-editor of the special issue of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly on “Trans Studies en las Americas.” In addition to her publications in academic journals, her work has been featured in Aperture; on NPR’s Latino USA, NBC.com, Canadian News Network, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Cosmopolitan for Latinas.

In 2023,  Dr. Rodríguez was honored by The Center for Gay and Lesbian Studies’ with the prestigious Kessler Award, in recognition of her significant lifelong contributions to the field of LGBT Studies. An international public speaker, her work touches on the politics of sex work, social justice activism, queer kink, feminist politics, Latinx pop culture, digital cultures, and sexuality and age. At Berkeley, At the University of California, Berkeley, Professor Rodríguez is affiliated faculty with the Berkeley Center for New Media; the Center for Race and Gender; the Center for Latin American Studies; the Latinx Research Center; the Haas Institute for Othering and belonging: LGBTQ Citizen Cluster; the Center for the Study of Sexual Cultures; the Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory; and the Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality. She is the proud recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award from the Division of Social Sciences and a Distinguished Faculty Mentor Award from the Graduate Assembly at UC Berkeley. Her website is: https://www.juanamariarodriguez.com/

Research Expertise and Interest

race and sexual politics, LGBTQ communities, Latino/a/x and Caribbean literatures and cultures, women of color feminisms, queer activism in the Americas, transgender studies, sex work