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.