Johanna Hernández-Pérez

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Johanna Hernández-Pérez

Graduate Student

Biography

I am a PhD candidate in Sociology at UCLA, working at the intersection of political sociology, race and ethnicity, and sociology of culture. My research asks how racial and cultural hierarchies are built to feel natural and permanent, and how they come undone.

Degrees

  • University of California, Los Angeles–Ph.D., Sociology, 2027 (Expected)
    • Dissertation: Negotiating Blackness: How Jamaica and Puerto Rico Represent Race for Tourism
    • Field Exams: Race and Ethnicity (Faculty: Vilma Ortiz, Min Zhou); Sociology of Culture (Faculty: Rebecca Jean Emigh, Aliza Luft)
  • University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras– B.A., Sociology (Summa Cum Laude), 2019
    • Honors Thesis: (Re)Writing Racialized and Gendered Scripts: Contemporary Bomba Practices and Discourses in Puerto Rico

Fields of Study

Subfields: Comparative and Historical Methods; Political Sociology; Race and Ethnicity; Sociology of Culture

Research

I develop a model centered on two dynamics that shape each other over time: alignment, the coordination among state actors, economic elites, and intellectuals that lets them impose durable representations, and contestation, the efforts of subaltern actors to advance competing narratives by achieving cultural resonance in civil society. Existing theories of political sociology identify the actors and alliances involved, but don’t explain how their different forms of power combine, or how the narratives they produce shift over time.

I evaluate this model in my dissertation through a comparative analysis, and l and extend its guiding question—how racial and cultural hierarchies are made and unmade—into two other sites: colonial visual culture and the formation of the American musical canon.

Publications

Peer-reviewed articles 

  • Emigh, Rebecca Jean and Johanna Hernández-Pérez (2022). The Present of the Past: A Sociotechnological Framework for Understanding the Availability of Research Materials.” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 44 (4): 16‒27.
  • Hernández-Pérez, Johanna. 2019. “Espacio Urbano y Música Popular: La (De)Construcción de la Ciudad de San Juan en la Salsa.” [IN]Genios 5 (2): 1-10.

Manuscripts under review 

  • Hernández-Pérez, Johanna. “Contesting National Identity: Elite Alignment and Reputation Management in 1950s Puerto Rico”. Revise and Resubmit, Social Forces.
  • Emigh, Rebecca Jean and Johanna Hernández-Pérez. “How do Geniuses Achieve Lasting Fame? The Dialectical Relationship Between Social Status and Artistic Insight.” Under review, Critical Sociology

Manuscripts in preparation

  • Hernández-Pérez, Johanna. “Hegemony, Myth, and Puerto Rican Postcards (1900s–1920s)”. 

Other publications

  • Emigh, Rebecca Jean, Johanna Hernández-Pérez, and Corey O’Malley. “Teaching Theory: Should We Cancel the Core?”. Perspectives 42, no. 2 (2020): 7-13.

Awards & Grants

  • External Fellowships
    • Graduate Studies Enhancement Grant, MMUF Graduate Initiatives Program, 2024
    • Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship, ACLS ($50,000), 2023
    • Travel & Research Grant, Institute of Citizens and Scholars, 2023
    • Predoctoral Research Development, MMUF Graduate Initiatives Program, 2023
    • Honorable Mention, Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship, 2021 
    • Graduate Studies Enhancement Grant, MMUF Graduate Initiatives Program, 2020

    Internal Fellowships and University Awards

    • Dissertation Fieldwork Fellowship, UCLA International Institute, 2025
    • Eugene V. Cota-Robles Fellowship, UCLA Graduate Division, 2024
    • Graduate Student Summer Research Grant, UCLA Latin American Institute, 2023
    • Graduate Student Summer Research Mentorship Program, UCLA, 2022
    • Graduate Research Mentorship Program, UCLA, 2020
    • Eugene V. Cota-Robles Fellowship, UCLA, 2019
    • Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF), UPR Río Piedras, 2017–2019

Conference Presentations

Panel Presentations

  • “Reworking Blackness: Elite Fragmentation and Cultural Contestation in Jamaican Tourism Advertising, 1970–1990.” American Sociological Association (ASA) Annual Meeting, New York, NY, August 2026. Accepted.
  • Emigh, Rebecca Jean, and Johanna Hernández-Pérez. “Where Do Geniuses Come From? The Dialectical Relationship Between Social Status and Artistic Insight.” ASA Virtual Annual Meeting, August 2021. (Presented by co-author). 
  • “Building a Nation for Global Consumption: Reputation Management Processes in Puerto Rico’s Tourist Industry.” Latin American Studies Association Virtual Congress, May 2021. 

 

Roundtable Presentations

  • “Taming Jamaica: Elite–Hotelier Alignments and the Advertising of Blackness, 1950s–1970s.” ASA Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL, August 2025.  
  • “Race for Development: Bureaucratic Competition over Puerto Rico’s International Image” ASA Annual Meeting, Montréal, Canada, August 2024. 
  • “Transiting through Racial, National, and Gendered Understandings: The Facebook (Counter)Discourses of Puerto Rican Bomba Groups”. ASA Annual Meeting’s Honors Program, Philadelphia, PA, August 2018.

Advisors

Rebecca Jean Emigh (chair), César Ayala, Aliza Luft, Vilma Ortiz, and Michelle Christian (University of Tennessee)