Announcing the new Director of the Humanities Scholars Program

Mon, 26 Aug 2024 10:24:36 -0400
news

The Dresher Center for the Humanities is pleased to announce a new director for the Humanities Scholars program.

Dr. Kate Drabinski is Principal Lecturer in Gender, Women's, + Sexuality Studies (GWST) and Associate Director of the Women Involved in Learning and Leadership (WILL+) program. Her focus areas of teaching and research include queer theory, transgender studies, LGBTQ+ history, and public humanities pedagogies and practices. As co-PI with Dr. Carole McCann on the Mellon-funded Affirming Multivocal Humanities grant, she organizes the UMBC LGBTQ+ Oral History Project, bringing students into conversation with queer people both on and off campus to record and preserve the histories of our communities. Her latest publication is Baltimore Revisited: Stories of Inequality and Resistance in a U.S. City, co-edited with UMBC's own Dr. Nicole King and Dr. Joshua Davis of the University of Baltimore.

Outside of UMBC Dr. Kate is an avid explorer of Baltimore's history, present, and future, usually on her much-loved bicycle. She leads walking tours about the city's LGBTQ+ and Civil Rights histories for Baltimore Heritage, where she serves on the Board. She organizes walking tours for students, faculty, and staff about the history of Pratt Street, public transportation, urban renewal, and more. She is keenly interested in why where we are is as it is, and how it might be otherwise.

Dr. Kate is excited to direct the Humanities Scholars program after serving on the committee for nearly a decade and teaching the freshman seminar several times. She was part of a similar program at her undergraduate institution and knows intimately the power of cohort-based interdisciplinary humanities teaching and research for making more interesting, meaningful, and impactful lives for all of us. She looks forward to working with students, faculty, and staff to continue building UMBC's vibrant humanities community.