معرفی
Kathleen Burns is a Research Fellow in the Department of Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Arts at Harvey Mudd College and a Hixon-Riggs Early Career Fellow in Science and Technology Studies.
Her research examines intersections of environmental humanities and transatlantic literature through plant domestication sites like plantations and greenhouses, revealing how biological understandings of life naturalize racialized and gendered hierarchies. Her book project Vegetal Forms: How Plants Cultivate Life in Literature and Science analyzes plant language circulation across literature, science, and art.
She teaches courses including "Environmental Crisis in Science and Literature," challenging students to interrogate crisis narratives using texts from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to IPCC reports. Her cross-disciplinary work includes co-teaching Duke's Bass Connections environmental courses and co-founding the "Unearthing Duke Forest" initiative examining plantation ecology's impact on scientific knowledge.
Her research is supported by fellowships from:
- Duke University
- American Philosophical Society
- American Council of Learned Societies
She received her PhD in English from Duke University and integrates vertically collaborative projects to reframe scientific issues like sustainability as narrative phenomena.
