Dr. Hernández is the Director of the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute and Professor of Sociology at the City College of New York.  She is also in the Doctoral Faculty at the Graduate Center of CUNY. Her research interests include the mobility of workers from Latin America and the Caribbean, the socioeconomic conditions of Dominicans in the U.S. and the restructuring of the world economy and its effects on working-class people. She has published and lectured extensively on these issues. Among her publications is a groundbreaking book on the socioeconomic conditions of Dominicans in the U.S and winner of Choice’s “Outstanding Academic Title”: The Mobility of Workers Under Advanced Capitalism: Dominican Migration to the United States (Columbia University Press). She is also co-author of the now classic Dominican-Americans (with Silvio Torres Saillant; Greenwood Press). More recently, Dr. Hernández published  La República Dominicana y la prensa extranjera: mayo 1961-septiembre 1963 (Desde la desaparición de Trujillo hasta Juan Bosch) (with Sully Saneaux; Biblioteca Nacional Pedro Henríquez Ureña, and is the editor for Classic Knowledge in Dominican Studies (Routledge), the first book series in Dominican Studies in the U.S.  Dr. Hernandez is currently working on two books under contract: Women and the Making of Dominican Society: Ideals and Activism (The University Press of Florida) co-authored with Sandy Placido and Diogenes Cespedes and Ellis Island Dominicans, 1892-1924: A Portrait of Money, Color, and Power (Columbia University Press).

Under her leadership the CUNY DSI has greatly expanded its Dominican Library and has launched its Dominican Archives, which holds possibly the only collection of Dominican colonial documents in the U.S. with approximately 110,000 pages of manuscripts from 16th century La Española (today's Dominican Republic). In 2011-2013 Dr. Hernández led an NEH-funded research project that produced the Spanish Paleography Digital Teaching and Learning Tool, the only interactive online platform in the world devoted to teaching the deciphering and reading of the handwriting styles of manuscripts from the early-modern Spanish-language world. Visit the tool. Read the White Paper about the Tool's functioning and its reception by the scholarly community.

Another interactive online project currently under her direction, First Blacks in the Americas, will feature new archival manuscripts, maps and photographs to tell the story of the first generations of Black Africans and their descendants to inhabit the Americas (in La Española) after Columbus.

Visit the DSI Center

Ph.D., Sociology, The Graduate Center, CUNY
M.Phil., Sociology, The Graduate Center, CUNY
M.A., Latin American and Caribbean Studies, New York University
B.A., Latin American History, Lehman College

Regularly Taught Courses

Foundations of Sociological Theory
19th Century Dominican Social Thought
Latinos in the U.S.
Sociological Thinking (graduate)
The Peopling of New York: CUNY Honor’s College Seminar II

Dominican Immigration

Dominican Workers in the U.S. Economy

Latinos Studies

Sociological Theory

Books

2013  La República Dominicana y la prensa extranjera: mayo 1961-septiembre 1963 (Desde la desaparición de Trujillo hasta Juan Bosch). Co-authored with Sully Saneaux.Santo Domingo: Biblioteca Nacional Pedro Henríquez Ureña.

2004 Desde la orilla: hacia una nacionalidad sin desalojos. Co-edited with Silvio Torres-Saillant and Blas Jiménez. Santo Domingo: Editora La Trinitaria.

2004 Building Strategic Partnerships for Development: Dominican Republic New York State. Co-edited with Maria Elizabeth Rodríguez. Santo Domingo: Editorial Corripio.

2002 The Mobility of Workers Under Advanced Capitalism: Dominican Migration to the United States. New York: Columbia University Press (Winner of "Outstanding Academic Title" Awarded by Choice, 2002.)

1998 The Dominican Americans. Co-authored with Silvio Torres-Saillant. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.

Book Chapters and Journal Articles (selected publications)

2013 "Dominican Americans." In Oxford Bibliographies in Latino Studies. Ed. Ilan Stavans. New York: Oxford University Press. 70 page-monograph.

2013 "Dominicans, in Three Continents, Go to the Polls" North American Congress on Latin America, Report on the Americas. Winter. Vol. 45.

2011 "Dominican Immigrants" 70-page monograph co-authored with Anthony Stevens-Acevedo, in Multicultural America. An Encyclopedia of the Newest Americans. Edited by Ron Bayor. Connecticut: Greenwood Press. 

2011 "The Dominican American Family," in Ethnic Families in America: Patterns and Variations. Edited by Roosevelt Wright. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

2011 Special Issue on Dominican Studies of Camino Real: Estudios de las Hispanidades Norteamericanas. Co-edited with Anthony Stevens-Acevedo. Spain:  Instituto Franklin de la Universidad de Alcalá. 3:4.

2011 "Dominicans and the National Latino/a Academy of Arts and Sciences." The Harvard Latino Law Review.  Massachussetts: Harvard Law School. Spring, Vol. 14:277-281.

2010  "Second Generation Dominicans and the Question of a Transnational Identity: Myths and Realities."  Co-authored with Utku Sezgin. Camino Real: Estudios de las Hispanidades Norteamericanas. Spain: Instituto Franklin de la Universidad de Alcalá.2:3:59-87

2008 "El sentimento anti-imigratorio en EE.UU. y el movimiento de inmigrantes," Global. Santo Domingo: Fundación Global Democracia y Desarrollo. 5:20: 43-51
      
2007 "Living on the Margins of Society: Dominicans in the United States."  Latinos in a Changing Society. Edited by Martha Montero-Sieburth and Edwin Meléndez. Connecticut: Greenwood Press.

2005 "On Dominicans in New York City's Garment Industry." in A Coat of Many Colors: Immigration,Globalization, and Reform in New York City's Garment Industry. Edited by Daniel Soyer. New York: Fordham University Press.

Book Reviews

2011 Review of Hispanic New York: A Sourcebook. In Latino Studies Journal. 9:4:486-488.

Encyclopedia Entries

2013  "Caribbean Migration." Encyclopedia of Race and Racism, 2nd Edition.   Co-authored with Griselda Rodríguez. G. Macmillan Reference, USA.

2012 "Dominicans in the United States."  The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Social History.  Edited by Lynn Dumenil. New York: Oxford University Press.

2005 "Frank Bonilla." Oxford Encyclopedia of Latinos & Latinas. Edited by Suzanne Oboler and Deena J. González. New York: Oxford University Press.

2005 "Dominican Studies." Co-authored with Silvio Torres-Saillant. Encyclopedia Latina: History, Culture and Society in the United States. Edited by Ilan Stavans and Lewis Sebring. Connecticut: Grolier Academic Preference.