Media and Events

Kessler Award Ceremony

The Center for LGBTQ Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center presents Dr. Juana María Rodríguez with the 31st annual Kessler Award. The David R. Kessler Award is given every year to a scholar and/ or activist who has produced a substantive body of work that has had a significant influence on the field of LGBTQ Studies. Keynote with opening presentations from Testimonial Speakers, Judith Butler, Nicole Fleetwood, and Emma Pérez.

Keynote (Testimonial Speakers start at 42:00)

LARB Radio Hour, Listen Here.

Eric Newman is joined by scholar and critic Juana María Rodríguez to discuss her latest book, Puta Life: Seeing Latinas, Working Sex. Moving between stories gleaned from archives, interviews, and Rodríguez's personal experience, Puta Life explores the proliferating and often incongruous meanings of the term "puta" as it circulates in Latinx identity and culture as a signifier of power and powerlessness, rebellion and revulsion, exaltation and degradation. In accounting for how the figure of the puta is socially produced through the regimes of race, gender, class, and the state, Rodríguez's moving stories of those living, struggling, and thriving on the margins ask us to reckon with the past, present, and future of sex work.

Queer Hispanisims Now

“Spectres of Puta Life,” Keynote Presentation

University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK, July 3-4, 2023

Keynote

Fleshy Spectacles and Broken Hearts: The Hookup/Displacement/Barhopping/Drama Tour

ICI: Institute of Cultural Inquiry, Berlin

Keynote

La Política de la Puteria y Otras Historias Queer (en español)

EHGAM Nafarroa, Spain

Keynote

Juana María Rodríguez: Sex Work is a Queer Issue

Interview

“Sex workers have always been part of queer communities, and the issues they face — sexual regulation, stigmatization and hate-fueled violence — are core to the LGBTQ community.”

My body, your right? —The Recast @ Politico

Interview

“It is really something much deeper and more profound, which is your personal autonomy — the fact that you have a right to own and control your own body,” says Rodríguez. “So I’m seeing a cluster of issues come together that are really about this very fundamental desire.”

The Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity presents the Annual Sexual Representation Collection Lecture Series.

“Representing Desire, Desiring Representation: The Amazing Past of Adela Vazquez”

February 2, 2023

Professor Juana María Rodríguez was awarded the prestigious Berlin Prize by the American Academy in Berlin. While in residence as the John P. Birkelund Fellow, she will be completing her manuscript Puta Life which pairs visual portraits of Latinas who have worked in the sex industry with biographical and autobiographical accounts of their lives in order to explore the limits and possibilities of representation. 

Lecture at the American Academy in Berlin

Berkeley Professor Juana María Rodríguez talks about her teaching and research for the Latinx Research Center and shares her best advice for students.

‘A dangerous moment:’ Professor Juana María Rodríguez talks sex work’s history and the internet’s future in the Daily Cal

Faculty Profile: Juana María Rodríguez on sexuality in public discourse

Juana María Rodríguez is a member of the Haas Institute's LGBT Cluster and a professor of Gender and Women's Studies at University of California, Berkeley. Here, she discusses the "politics of respectability" in the gay marriage movement and how sexual identity politics influence discourse surrounding public policy decisions.

Statistics and Queer Theory

Professor Juana María Rodríguez, from UC Berkeley's Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, suggests that scholars in the field of Queer Studies would benefit from a turn to statistics as a lens into bisexuality and other identities.

Entrevista en Pagina 12

Profesora de Berkeley Juana María Rodríguez habla con Paula Jiménez España sobre la homonormatividad, el racismo de los EEUU, y las realidades sexuales, culturales, y afectivas de Latinxs cuir.

Latinx: The Engendering of the Spanish Language

The word Latinx has gained popularity as some people try to change the Spanish language to make it more inclusive.