Associate Professor
Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 1996
phone: 404-413-5148
e-mail: kewilson@gsu.edu
Kate has a Ph.D. in Folklore and Folklife from the University of Pennsylvania, and received her B.A .in History at Georgetown University. She began her public history career at The Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies, where she served as Director of Education and Outreach and directed a series of projects documenting the new immigrant experience in Philadelphia . She has ten-years' experience in public history, specifically in directing community-oriented, K-12 education, and online projects. Recently she worked as director of education and interpretation at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, overseeing HSP’s publication, programming, education, website, and community history efforts.
Her research interests lie in nineteenth-century American cultural history, gender studies, material culture, and immigration/ethnic studies. She has published on nineteenth-century women’s clothing practices, on patterns of ethnicity in the mid-Atlantic, and on presenting ethnic cultures in public. Her current research focuses on the impact of ethnic and immigrant communities on the urban cultural landscape, and on the representation of the immigrant experience in public history contexts.