katherine pandora
I'm very appreciative of the freedom to research and write and teach that being employed at a university offers, but I also get really frustrated with how claustrophic and self-centered life inside the ivy walls can be. In between going to grad school (2x!), first to learn cognitive psychology and then history of science, I've worked in politics (the Campaign for Economic Democracy), at a medical non-profit (Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation), a general interest magazine (California, formerly New West -- it was a sister pub of Texas Monthly)...well, you get the idea. It seems like my personality was by its essence dispersed, distributed, and hyperlinked -- much more difficult to make sense of before the Internet became a public reality.
I study the history of science, the public, and popular culture, which includes childhood studies, science fiction, and mass media. I've done some blogging, some website building, and after first scratching my head about them have learned that I love twitter and tumblr. I have taught a grad seminar in digital humanities for three years, and a new undergraduate course focused on undergraduate research in digital humanities in 2015. Digitization of sources and journals has changed my life as an historian, and I'm fascinated with how the Internet has shifted the nature of authority and expertise in the circulation of knowledge (an outgrowth of my scholarly training, but also my various life activities).
I'm not naturally skilled in technical matters (I'm what you might call "techno-lethargic") but I care greatly about what communications technologies can do to change society and I can apply myself and learn what I need to when inspired (and given enough coffee). I've read everything Edmund Crispin ever wrote, hope to hear that Sleater-Kinney is releasing a new album any day now, came to believe that art can change your life when I saw Simon Rodia's Watts Towers as a senior in high school and then came to believe that art can change your life all over again when I saw Michael C. McMillen's 1981 "The Central Meridian", and think Cheerwine is the perfect drink with anything.
