Senior Spotlight: Katelyn Barbour (BA'25, history and gender and women's studies)
"I am proud to have found my historical niche at the University of Illinois. Under the guidance of faculty members like Professor Erik McDuffie and Professor Leslie Reagan, I have been able to hone my focus to an intersectional and socially conscientious lens of history. As understanding our historical past is being seen as more and more dangerous by current administrative bodies in the United States and abroad, I find my passion for this exact type of intersectional and marginalized-social history to be driven by a desire for stories that explain and inform our collective resilience." - Katelyn Barbour
Research Interests
Katelyn is currently writing a senior history honors thesis on prostitution in early twentieth-century Chicago, with a focus on the moral panic surrounding “white slavery”—the belief that young women and girls were being kidnapped and sold into prostitution at unprecedented rates. Her research explores the distinctions and connections between forced sex trafficking and consensual sex work, as well as how prostitutes were treated as laborers within Chicago’s vice economy during this period.
Internship involvement
Katelyn is currently the managing editor of SourceLab, the digital history publication affiliated with the history department. SourceLab hosts SourceLab Mondays every week, where digital humanists share their work and discuss digital humanities projects. As managing editor, Katelyn oversees the progression of digital editions being composed and revised for the SourceLab journal.
She is also co-president of PizzaFM, an online radio station based out of Allen Hall, vice president of the Gender and Women’s Studies RSO, and vice president of the Undergraduate History Journal at Illinois. Katelyn was also one of the organizers of the Fall 2024 Phi Alpha Theta History Conference.
Recognition and awards
Katelyn has received the Waterman, Johannsen, and Breymann scholarships in recognition of her excellent history capstone paper, honors thesis proposal, and overall excellence in the field of history, respectively. She has also been awarded the Thompson Scholarship for her dedication to the study of gender and women’s studies.
Plans after college
Katelyn plans on pursuing her master's in history at the University of Chicago.