Kate A. Baldwin

Kate A. Baldwin is Professor of English, Communication, and Gender and Sexuality Studies at Tulane University, where she specializes in 20th- and 21st-century U.S. and Russian literatures, Cold War culture, feminist theory, and creative fiction. Prior to coming to Tulane in 2018, she was Professor of American Studies and Communication at Northwestern University, where she also directed the American Studies Program.

She is the author of two books Beyond the Color Line and the Iron Curtain: Reading Encounters between Black and Red (Duke) and The Racial Imaginary of the Cold War Kitchen: From Sokol’niki Park to Chicago’s South Side (Dartmouth). Her other publications include articles, book chapters, op-eds, and fiction in a wide range of journals, including Cultural Critique, Diaspora, Modern Fiction Studies, Novel, modernism/modernity, American Literary History, Feminist Media Studies, and Russian Review, as well as mainstream venues including Huffington Post, The Hill, Quartz, Global Post, Truth-Out, and Narrative. Her article on Nella Larsen’s Passing was anthologized in the Norton Critical Edition of Passing. Baldwin’s new book on women, race, and work developed from a course she started teaching over a decade ago called “Bad Moms.”

Baldwin’s past honors include the Carol G. Lederer Postdoctoral Fellowship at Brown University’s Pembroke Center, an Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at Johns Hopkins University, and the Vera M. Schuyler Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. She has twice been a Professeur Invitée at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. In 2024, she was a fellow at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. In 2024-26, she was PI on a Sawyer Seminar Grant from the Mellon Foundation, with Karissa Haugeberg and Clare Daniel, to support “The Green New Wave: Reproductive Justice in the Gulf South and Beyond,” which included seminars, film screenings, a theatrical production, and community events.