Hi everyone! My name is Katie Williams, and I am thrilled to join the Futures Initiative team as the incoming Communications Director. 

As a PhD candidate in English at the CUNY Graduate Center, my research centers on Victorian literature, disability studies, and religion and spirituality. My dissertation explores how nineteenth-century literature resists and reimagines theological concepts surrounding the disabled body, offering more nuanced and capacious visions of the body, faith, sex, and the natural world in the process. My work has been featured in Dickens Studies Annual and Victorian Review, and is forthcoming in the MLA Guide, Approaches to Teaching the Works of Elizabeth Gaskell. I also serve on the board of the North American Victorian Studies Association. 

Centering disability justice is at the heart of both my scholarship and my pedagogy. My teaching journey began in France, where I taught at several primary schools before joining the GC. Since then, I have taught first-year writing and Victorian literature at Brooklyn College, and I currently teach Great Works of Literature at Baruch College. Across my courses, I strive to design and cultivate accessible learning environments that meet the needs of all learners. I have learned that flourishing looks like meeting students where they are at, rather than requiring any one bodymind to fit the needs of the course, and that accessibility and innovation go hand in hand. 

In this new role with the Futures Initiative, I am so excited to contribute to our shared mission of making higher education more open, equitable, and accessible for everyone. I am looking forward to supporting FI’s The University Worth Fighting For series. These events and webinars advocate for transforming higher education by placing equity and social justice at the center, particularly at a time when these core values face critical threats. I am delighted to be organizing one on accessible pedagogy in the near future. I am also thrilled to help spotlight the innovative teaching happening across CUNY classrooms, in our brand-new newsletter section, “Classroom Closeup.” I am always searching for practical ways to make my classroom a more engaging, collaborative, and inclusive space, and I hope these experiences and practical strategies from across the CUNY-verse inspire you too. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you would like to be featured and/or collaborate!

To my FI Team, I am so grateful to join such a dedicated group of thinkers. I look forward to learning and growing alongside you this year, in a community grounded in collaboration, fueled by passion, and sustained by care.