Katie Batza

Katie Batza (uses any pronoun) earned a doctorate in United States 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. Katie joined the University of Kansas department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies in 2014 as their first 100% hired appointment. In the intervening years, they have served as the department's Director of Undergraduate Studies, Director of Graduate Studies, and since 2023, Department Chair of WGSS.

Batza's research explores the intersection of sexuality, health, and politics in the late 20th-century United States. Their most recent book, AIDS in the Heartland, is in the production pipeline with the University of North Carolina Press. Batza is also the lead PI on a multi-year $1 million Mellon Foundation grant to support Trans Studies in the Commons, a multi-faceted project that will result in a new faculty line, annual symposiums with over 20 virtual fellows, and a wide array of community collaborations. The work of this grant is made possible by the intellectual brilliance of faculty members and fellow PIs Jeanne Vaccaro, Marta Vicente, and Abe Weil.

Batza’s first book, Before AIDS, was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in February 2018 and explores gay health activism in the period before AIDS. Katie also has published on the history of lesbians and the fertility industry, mapping queer health history, and neoliberalism. Collaboration across fields, mixed methods, oral history, and public humanities are hallmarks of Batza's broader research agenda as is evidenced by their completion of a walking tour and podcast project on reproductive justice in Boston, several cross-disciplinary analyses of access to healthcare for gender non-conforming and disabled individuals, and their role in the National Park Service’s LGBTQ initiative, contributing a chapter to the National Park Services LGBTQ theme study.They played an active role in co-founding a non-profit, Rainbow Heritage Network, that aids in identifying, preserving, and interpreting historic sites of particular meaning to the LGBTQ communities. Batza is also committed to working with community partners and working across disciplinary boundaries around important issues which propelled her to co-found, along with Dr. Nicole Reiz, the Big Ideas Incubator at KU that coordinated teams of faculty, students, and community members to address issues of local food access and insecurity from 2019-2022. Due to the wide array of research projects and interests, Batza’s work has been funded by numerous organizations including Point Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Philosophical Society, a Mellon-Schlesinger fellowship from Harvard University, the Whiting Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and numerous internal grants.

Batza’s future research will be increasingly interdisciplinary and public facing as they build upon research partnerships that include a rainbow of academics and community partners from medical doctors in Boston, architects and environmental scientists in Lawrence, and non-profits in Lawrence, St. Louis, Topeka, and Washington, DC. While the first two monographs examined the creation of healthcare and political activism amidst ostracism from or absence of mainstream medicine in the periods before and during HIV/AIDS, the next book will explore the role of food in creating queer communities, politics, and health.

Batza loves being in the classroom and trying innovative things there. She has been an Honors Faculty Fellow, has won several grants for course design, and enjoys mentoring undergraduate and graduate students. Please check the course offerings for upcoming semesters.