Kate Drabinski

Dr Kate Drabinski is a Lecturer of Gender and Women’s Studies, and she is also the Director of the Women Involved in Learning and Leadership (WILL) program, a co-curricular program and Living-Learning community sponsored by GWST. She received her Ph.D. in Rhetoric with a graduate certificate in Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies from the University of California, Berkeley in 2006. She has taught a wide range of introductory courses in gender and sexuality studies at several universities. During her four-year tenure at Tulane University, Kate presided over a curriculum revision process that resulted in tremendous enrollment growth in the Gender and Sexuality Studies department.

At UMBC she teaches Introduction to Gender and Women’s Studies, Introduction to Critical Sexuality Studies, Studies in Feminist Activism, Unruly Bodies, and Sexuality and Queer Theory.

Dr Kate was awarded a UMBC Breaking Ground grant to reorganize the department’s Studies in Feminist Activism to incorporate civic agency and digital activism into the program on a more permanent basis. Dr Kate is the point person for the new Critical Sexuality Studies minor that she helped develop in 2011-2012. She serves on the Faculty Senate, the Digital Humanities Working Group, and is on the board of the Orser Center for the Study of Place, Community and Culture.

Kate’s research interests include transgender studies, critical pedagogy, public history, and theories of activism. She is on the Editorial Board of the journal Radical Teacher and edits their blog. She writes a local history column for Indyreader, Baltimore’s web-based newspaper, and also serves on their Board of Directors. She has also written for City Paper and writes a popular bicycling blog that deals with local history, politics, and culture. Kate is currently working on a grant-supported collaboration with two local Baltimore artists to produce a series of semi-permanent monuments to LGBT history in Baltimore as well as a book project about museums and the uses of public memory in the city as urban redevelopment.