Katie Batza

Dr. Katie Batza earned her doctorate in U.S. History from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2011 along with a graduate concentration in Work, Race, Gender, and the Urban World, and a graduate certificate in Gender and Women's Studies. Her research explores the intersection of sexuality, health, and politics in the late-20th century United States. Her current book-length project, "Before AIDS" is under advance contract and currently under review at the University of Pennsylvania Press and explores gay health activism in the period before AIDS. She employs a wide array of research methods in her work, including oral history.

In addition, Dr. Batza also has a forthcoming article from the Journal of Women’s History that examines the history of lesbians and the fertility industry. She has played an active role in the National Park Service’s LGBTQ initiative, contributing a chapter to the National Park Services LGBTQ theme study and co-founding a non-profit, Rainbow Heritage Network, that aids in identifying, preserving, and interpreting historic sites of particular meaning to the LGBTQ communities. She is working on a second book project that explores the experiences of the early AIDS crisis in the Heartland with particular interest in how people with AIDS and their allies enacted and deployed claims to citizenship in response to the health crisis.

Dr. Batza joined the Honors team as a faculty fellow in the spring semester of 2020.