Scholar
Artist
Educator
Creating a more just world through theatre and the arts.
About
Dr. Herrera uses the powerful instruments of the visual and performing arts as tools to document history, build community, and ignite social change. Her teaching, research, and community-based projects explore the social inequities experienced by under-represented communities; specifically Latinx and African American diasporic communities, and LGBTQ+ people of color.
Recent Work
Nuyorican Feminist Performances: From the Café to Hip Hop Theater critically examines the work of female performance artists inspired by the Nuyorican Poets Cafe between 1973–2010.
Published by University of Michigan Press, 2020
Praise for Nuyorican Feminist Performances: From the Café to Hip Hop Theater
“A tour-de-force that fills a significant void in the literature of Latina/o/x cultural expression within the context of New York City.”
Wilson Valentín-Escobar
University of Massachusetts Lowell
Recent Highlights —
Fight for Knowledge
Collaborative Project —
This project, in collaboration with Laura Browder, uses a combination of theater and museum studies to teach students about the rich, complex history of Richmond’s fraught legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.
Nuyorican Feminist Performances
From the Café to Hip Hop Theater —
Through archival research and interview, this book examines the contributions of 1970s and ’80s performeras and how they challenged the Café’s gender politics. It also looks at recent artists who have built on that foundation with hip hop that speak to contemporary audiences.
Entre Puerto Rico y Richmond
Exhibition / Film —
This is a three-part mixed-media installation honoring a lineage of resistance against U.S. colonialism. The exhibit explores the historical concept of “commonwealth,” its legacy and its connection to exploitation and colonialism.