Alejandra Herrera is a first-generation citizen and graduate student raised in Las Vegas, Nevada. Growing up in a desert town, she profoundly loves air conditioning, cold beverages, and neon signs. Her M.A. thesis from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, focuses on female lowriders and is titled: “‘Who Says Lowriders Are Only For Men?”: Lowriders In Las Vegas, Nevada”. Alejandra is a third-year Ph.D. student at the University of Oklahoma. Her research interests include the American West, Mexican American history, and urban environments. She is particularly interested in the commodification of Mexican American subcultures in and out of the U.S. during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. As a first-generation scholar, Alejandra aims to make the works of academia accessible and relatable to working-class communities. Alejandra’s dissertation intends to focus on race and urban environments and their connection to transnational subcultures, culture commodification, and consumer cultures. She aims to focus on Japanese lowriders and a Mexican-inspired (with lowrider/Mexican American aesthetic) barber shop in Vietnam.
