Kate Kushner is a graduate student in the Departments of History and African American Studies at Princeton studying the American South. She is interested in the community organizing practices of grassroots activists during the civil rights movement, as well as the relationships between historical methodologies, historical memory, and the arts. Kate is currently researching student activism in the 1960s, paying particular attention to students’ organizational networks and efforts to pioneer new forms of democratic engagement in the South. In addition, Kate is also working on a research project that examines Octavia E. Butler’s uses of history and fiction in her writing, placing Butler’s work in conversation with the writings of Black feminist historians of slavery.

Before coming to Princeton, Kate graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in Political Science. At Yale, she researched Black political organizing in the South between the 1910s and the 1940s and served as a researcher for the Yale and Slavery Working Group.

In her free time, Kate enjoys running, listening to jazz, and working with other students on their writing as a fellow at the Princeton Writing Center. She is originally from Raleigh, North Carolina and is a proud graduate of North Carolina public schools.