Kris Klein Hernández

Kris Klein Hernández serves as a Postdoctoral Associate and Lecturer in the Ethnicity, Race, & Migration program at Yale University, where he recently completed his dissertation examining U.S. border posts' role in shaping race relations among ethnic Mexicans, African American soldiers, and Native peoples across Texas, New Mexico, and Mexico from 1846 to 1917.

His research critically engages with Borderlands History, Chicanx Studies, and U.S. History through the lens of race, gender, and sexuality, emphasizing how marginalized communities navigate power structures. Hernández currently develops a book project using Beinecke Library archives and co-edits an anthology centering queer Latinx historians' testimonies, exploring how homophobia, sexism, and racism in academia shape scholarly work on trans/her/histories. His scholarship draws on concepts like 'countersovereignty' to analyze imperialism's impact on borderlands communities.

Hernández brings extensive teaching experience from facilitating Bowdoin College's Mellon Mays program seven times, where he taught courses using foundational texts like Trouillot's Silencing the Past and Pérez's The Decolonial Imaginary to center Black and Indigenous perspectives in historical representation. His pedagogy emphasizes storytelling as a tool for understanding historical change and building emancipatory futures, now applied to Yale's academic community.