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About Me

Katherine Walden is an Assistant Teaching Professor of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame, with concurrent appointments in the College of Engineering, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, and Gender Studies Program. She is affiliated faculty with Notre Dame’s Technology Ethics Center (ND-TEC). She received a Ph.D. in American Studies-Sport Studies at the University of Iowa, where she also earned M.A. in Library and Information Science, with a Certificate in Public Digital Humanities. Walden earned a B.M. in Musical Arts from Vanderbilt University.

Her research and teaching looks at the intersection of sport and culture, with a focus on professional baseball labor. She is currently working on a monograph project that outlines an alternative history for professional baseball labor through focusing on Minor League Baseball players and teams. Her research uses data analysis, visualization, and interactive digital mapping to illustrate the scale and scope of Minor League Baseball labor, as well as the historical forces and labor structures that shape Minor League players’ working conditions. She is also involved in outreach and advocacy work lobbying for improved working conditions for Minor League players.

Another key area of teaching and research involves critical approaches to digital humanities pedagogy, with an emphasis on intersectional feminist and anti-racist pedagogical approaches for teaching interdisciplinary data literacy, data science, and computational thinking. This work uses digital humanities methods and pedagogies to help students gain facility with digital technology, while also thinking critically about historical context and intersecting structures of power. Areas of expertise include humanistic approaches to data analysis and visualization, with a focus on data management, critical mapping, and digital scholarship.

Katherine has previously worked at the Iowa Women’s Archives, Library of Congress, National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Nashville Symphony Orchestra, and most recently Grinnell College (Iowa). She has presented her research at the annual meetings of the Association for Computers and the Humanities, American Studies Association, and North American Society for Sport History. Past courses include “Baseball and America,” “Rhetoric of Sport,” “Sport and the Media,” “Digital Stories for Social Justice,” “The Digital Age,” and “Digital Archives and Oral History,” as well as a variety of mentored student research projects.

Recent Publications

Walden, K. (2017, July 11). Washington Nationals’ Western Tour. In The Muse: The Library of Congress Performing Arts Reading Room Blog.

Walden, K. (2017, July 31). The Umpire Strikes Out: Baseball Music and Labor. Library of Congress Blog.

Walden, K., guest. (2017, July 19). Baseball and Music [podcast]. Music in 2 Flavors.

Walden, K., co-host. (Fall 2016-Spring 2017). The Newly-Composed PhD: Writing Across Careers Podcast.

Walden, K. (2017, April 6). Baseball Myths in Trump’s America. Sport in American History.

Walden, K. (2017, March 29). Blogging Within and Beyond the Academy. University of Iowa Next Generation PhD.

Walden, K. (2016, December 30). A Method to the Method. University of Iowa Next Generation PhD.

Walden, K. (2016, May 22). Using the Archive to Teach Sport History, Digital Humanities, and Rhet-Comp. Digital Humanities Now.

Walden, K. (2016, July). Saturday Night Baseball. National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

Media Coverage

Social Media

kwaldenphd

Country Focus

U.S., Latin America

Expertise by Geography

Caribbean, Central America, Latin America, North America, United States

Expertise by Chronology

20th century, 21st century

Expertise by Topic

Gender, Labor, Libraries & Archives, Migration & Immigration, Museums, Pedagogy, Public History, Race, Sports, Technology, Women