Kayleigh Whitman

Kayleigh Whitman is a sixth year PhD candidate whose research focuses on the role of religious ideas in African American women’s international activism in the early twentieth century. Her dissertation, “Faith in the World Community: Sue Bailey Thurman and Black Women’s World Reconstruction, 1920-1950” examines themes of race, gender, and religion through an intellectual biography of activist and educator Sue Bailey Thurman. She is especially concerned with the ways that religious ideas influence the international activism of African American women in the early twentieth century. Her advisor is Professor Dennis C. Dickerson. 

 

In addition to her dissertation research, Whitman has earned a certificate in American Studies and is completing a certificate in College Teaching through Vanderbilt’s Center for Teaching. Her research has been supported by the Rose Library at Emory University, Smith College, the Russell G. Hamilton Graduate Leadership Institute, and the Massachusetts Historical Society through a NERFC Fellowship. She has presented her work at the American Society of Church History and participated in panels at the National Council on Public History.  

 

She previously held an Andrew W. Mellon Graduate Fellowship in Digital Humanities at the Vanderbilt Center for Digital Humanities, which supported her public history work with local history non-profit Nashville Sites. Whitman’s public history work joins her interest in community engagement with education, while also considering how digital tools can aid in the expansion of local historical narratives to be more inclusive and representative of their constitutive communities. Her digital humanities work has been funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Partners for Humanities Collaboration and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.