Dr. Kate Huber, PhD

PhD English, Teacher, Environmental Humanities

 

About

Dr. Katherine (Kate) Huber, PhD, specializes in multimedia cultural analysis, postcolonial studies, and transnational environmental justice, with a focus on anglophone Irish, African, and Caribbean literatures and cultures, including diaspora cultural production in Britain. Kate’s first book project draws on literature, film, and archival photography and radio to explore how development projects shape social relations, material landscapes, and cultural production in twentieth century Ireland. Kate teaches a broad range of cultural and environmental studies topics and theories in her language arts and literature and writing courses.

Kate Huber

Scholarly Writing

“‘The bog is a technology of its own’: Rupturing the Logic of Natural Resource Development in Risteard Ó Domhnaill’s The Pipe,” Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment (ISLE), 3 August 2022, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/isle/isac048, issue forthcoming

“Decolonizing Irishness: Assertions of Afro-Irish Self-Determination in Nicky Gogan and Paul Rowley’s Seaview and Melatu Uche Okorie’s This Hostel Life,” Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Vol. 25, no. 6 (2023), pp. 775-804 , DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2022.2157311

“Teaching the Ocean: Literature and History in the Study of the Sea,” co-authored with Hayley Brazier, Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment (ISLE), Vol. 30, no. 2 (2023), pp. 262-282. 
DOI: 10.1093/isle/isaa131

“‘The Eden of the future…looking like the banished past’: Reading Riparian Agency in Deep Time in Ciaran Carson’s Belfast Confetti,” Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism, Vol. 25, no. 1 (2021), pp. 17-32. DOI10.1080/14688417.2021.1893206

“The View from Mrs. Kelly’s Window: Reframing Agency and Land in the Congested Districts Board Photographs,” Éire-Ireland: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Irish Studies special issue on Ireland and the Environment, Vol. 55, no. 3&4 (Fall/Winter 2020), pp. 95-128. 
DOI: 10.1353/eir.2020.0018

Public Writing

Listen to my conversation with Paul Rowley and Nicky Gogan on The Irish Itinerary podcast. They talk about their documentaries Seaview (2008), Build Something Modern (2011) and The Red Tree (2018). In discussing their journeys into filmmaking, Paul and Nicky trace how they came to Seaview’s experimental style, which challenges the aesthetics of documentaries while foregrounding asylum seekers’ experiences. Community projects Paul and Nicky did with residents at the DP centre in Mosney while filming Seaview inform and deepen the inverse connection Seaview has with Build Something Modern. Paul and Nicky also share insights into their more recent and future projects, including a documentary about gun violence in the USA and writing scripts for film and television. Find The Irish Itinerary podcast on any podcast app or on the EFACIS website: https://www.efacis.eu/podcast

Read more about why Ireland is such an important case study for the environmental humanities. The University of Oregon’s Center for the Study of Women in Society (CSWS) generously supported my research in the 2020-21 academic year. In the CSWS Annual Review, I offer an overview of my research and why it matters today in “Urgent Pauses” on page 28.

Looking for some online teaching ideas? Teaching Environmental Literature Online describes an interactive mapping tool that helped students position themselves in relation to texts we read from around the world.

The Dutch blog site Tussenwoord  hosts in-depth reflections on various topics, ranging from literature to philosophy and politics. In “Zo bedoelde ik het niet!” and “Wil je gezien worden voor meer dan je lichaam?” I offer everyday explanations of what academics mean by feminism and the descriptive turn for the non-specialist Dutch reader. 

Teaching

At Tilburg University, I teach a broad range of media and cultural studies courses through interdisciplinary methods. To see what courses I am currently teaching, please visit my faculty profile page.

At the University of Oregon, I was an instructor of record of college writing and literature classes, and I also assist in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies courses, where I provide and scaffold feedback on assignments.

My desire to effect program-wide changes led me to successfully apply for the role of Assistant Director of Composition, with the goal of planning projects to support equity and inclusion in the UO’s largest program, the composition program, through which around 7,000 students pass each year. As Assistant Director of Composition, I created online materials to show instructors how to reach out to students in crisis and connect them with resources. I also designed trainings for new teachers on how to lead discussions about complex issues, such as racism, when the stakes of such issues are different for every student in the class and are particularly high for students of color. The training materials I designed demonstrated my commitment to supporting diversity, for which I was awarded a “Commendation of Equity and Inclusion in the Teaching of Argumentative Writing” in 2019.

The Sea Education Association (SEA) is one of seven well-known oceanography institutions in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, USA. SEA’s primary focus is on semester-long marine science programs for college students. I was the Ocean & Society instructor for SEAScape, a high-school program for ambitious students looking to gain college-level experience. As instructor of Oceans & Society, I taught a college-level course on the historical, political, cultural, and economic relationships of the Atlantic. I worked with an oceanographer to develop an integrated curriculum in which students might learn how to use both humanistic and scientific skillsets in their scholarly inquiries.

Read about online courses I’ve taught in Teaching Environmental Literature Online

 

Contact

Contact Kate using the form below or at the University of Oregon web page