Kathryn Wymer (she/her/hers) is Associate Professor of English in the Department of Language and Literature at North Carolina Central University, and she also teaches in the Women’s and Gender Studies program. Her teaching and research interests include gender studies, queer theory, digital humanities, and medieval literature.
Project Description:
My fellowship began in Fall 2016 as I was teaching the first LGBTQ literature course for undergraduates that had ever been offered at North Carolina Central University. As I worked with the students, it became clear that highlighting the contributions of African-American authors who identified as part of, or as allies to, the LGBTQ community would be a project of lasting value. The outcome was a website containing a timeline and student projects. We used Reclaim Hosting, WordPress, and Timeline JS as a class to develop the site, and students also created their own digital projects using a variety of programs (such as Prezi, PowerPoint, Google Slides, etc.).
Positive Outcomes:
- Our site is publicly available for anyone wanting to learn more about the topic: http://lgbtqblackauthors.com/
- The Digital Humanities component of my Fall 2016 class is something I intend to take with me and discuss at the HASTAC 2017 conference in Orlando next November.
- I’m using things I learned this year to participate in an institute on supporting QTPOC at NCCU Summer 2017. I’ll additionally be producing a short video for that.
- I’ll expand on this project and further develop the site the next time I teach LGBTQ literature. My future plan is to merge the creation of deep maps with QTPOC authors, ideally as a collaboration with the Pauli Murray project.
