The Humanities Without Walls (HWW) consortium selected Kathryn Whitlock MA’21, a Harry W. Bass Jr. School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology PhD student, for a highly competitive career exploration program in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Whitlock, a second-year PhD student in Critical Media Studies, is among 25 doctoral candidates in the humanities and humanistic social sciences who will represent their institutions in the Predoctoral Career Diversity Summer Workshop. The program will occur at the University of Minnesota’s College of Liberal Arts from July 17 through 28.
HWW, a consortium of humanities centers and institutes at 16 major research universities, invites humanities-focused doctoral students to join the annual summer program. The Predoctoral Career Diversity Summer Workshop provides educational sessions, talks, and site visits to inspire participants to utilize their skills and humanities training and learn about potential career paths in diverse sectors.
“It is hard to find the words to capture what this award means to me,” Whitlock said. “It means a great deal to be recognized as a burgeoning scholar in the humanities, as someone who was rigorously trained in the natural and life sciences until graduate school. Having my peers, faculty, and HWW recognize my research as valuable is reassuring that I am doing good, meaningful work in and for our multispecies world. I am very much looking forward to the opportunity to further elucidate the importance of career diversity and the essential work that can be done beyond academia.”
At the Bass School, Whitlock serves as a teaching assistant for Reading Media Critically (ATCM 2321), a writing-intensive course focused on teaching students how to apply the foundational concepts and approaches of multiple schools of critical theory to film, television, and other popular culture texts.
Whitlock received her BS in entomology at Texas A&M University and her MA in Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication at UT Dallas in 2021. She is actively pursuing research that explores the spaces where the nonhuman animal meets feminist science and technology studies, critical media studies, surveillance studies, and feminist film studies.
The Critical Media Studies program at the Bass School explores how to analyze and think critically about the power of the media and how its influence shapes race, gender, sexuality, socioeconomic status, citizenship, and other social differences. Students investigate how media and communication technologies intersect with public thought and social relations and explore how we use technologies to make the world more just and equitable.
To learn more about the Critical Media Studies undergraduate and graduate programs offered by the Harry W. Bass Jr. School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology at the University of Texas at Dallas, visit: https://bass.utdallas.edu/programs/critical-media-studies/
The Bass School’s communication team caught up with Whitlock to learn about the award and her time at UT Dallas. The questions and responses have been edited for clarity and brevity.
I graduated from Texas A&M University with a BS in entomology in 2019. During my last year of undergraduate study, my work centered on the monarch butterfly species. I researched factors contributing to their declining population, such as habitat loss, invasive species, and other factors.
In addition to my studies, I worked as a writer for the college newspaper, The Battalion, and worked under the Science & Technology desk. After a year as a writer, I became an editor for the Life & Arts desk. During the summers of undergraduate school, I was a marketing and communications intern at the Dallas-based architectural firm HKS.
Entomological research and my affinity for journalism and media led me to the fertile ground in graduate school at UT Dallas. I was initially drawn to the Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication (ATEC) program, as it is a recognized multidisciplinary academic research school with reputable STEAM programs that would allow me to meld my previous interests in science and journalism ethics. My master’s thesis, “Handle with Care: Digital Citizen Science and Data Feminism in the Anthro-Capitalocene,” aligns with a vision for a more just and well-maintained world, as it illuminates the critical predicament of butterflies in a world of climate change as well as how various ways citizen science efforts in a digital era can enact more harm than good to beings in need of conservation.
By reframing care through a speculative ethics of care approach, I stressed the need to engage indigenous knowledge. I argued that specific citizen science projects remain entangled in a system that seeks to exploit animal bodies and hinders the projects’ ability to treat and care for butterflies and the environment ethically.
The award allows me to attend the two-week workshop that enables the fellows to discern personal career values, build community within the 2023 cohort, forge professional contacts, and research possible career pathways. The fellows will learn how to leverage our skills and humanities training towards careers in various sectors, like nonprofits, government, private sectors, arts admin, public media, etc. The workshop also foregrounds social justice within the context of career diversity programming.
The HWW workshop will provide critical insights for my future as I want to work for an environmental organization. One of them is the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, an international nonprofit organization that protects the natural world by conserving invertebrates and their habitats.
Because racist, sexist, ableist, and classist practices remain embedded in many environmental organizations and citizen science efforts in the U.S., the HWW workshop will provide the tools for me to carry humanistic thought to the organization. Furthermore, as a science-based organization, Xerces collaborates with federal and state agencies, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture, scientists, land managers, educators, and citizens, to promote invertebrate conservation, applied research, advocacy, public outreach, and education.
Thus, HWW will help me leverage my skills and foreground a humanities-based approach to work across these various domains as a member of Xerces.
I want to thank Dr. Olivia Banner, Dr. Kim Knight, Dr. Hong-An Wu, and Dr. Shilyh Warren for supporting me throughout my time here at UTD. I would not be where I am today without your guidance, care, and encouragement.