Katelyn Baker

Biography
Katelyn Baker was born in North Dakota on March 12, 1988. She moved to Massachusetts in her second year of life, where she grew up attending first Catholic school and then a highly competitive high school in a small, mostly Jewish town. Katelyn entered Hampshire in Fall 2006, when she lived on D4 and was enrolled in Writing World War II as a tutorial. Through this class, she met her comrade Kari Collins and discovered her true calling as a historian. Throughout her first year, she read many exciting accounts of the Second World War aloud, and tried to pretend that she was considering studying things other than 20th-century history. This was also the year that she invented Cookie Party, a very important Thursday Night tradition. In her second year, Katelyn was a member of Fphour and perfected her ability to create incredibly gay collages on any available flat surface. Katelyn's third year at Hampshire saw her living in Mod 22 with her lesbro Dillon Compton and going on many late-night slushie runs to the Hess Station. She spent the summer of 2009 working at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, learning to use a crowd control voice and where all the best restaurants in Washington DC are. In her final year of Hampshire, she is living in mod 86 and has perfected the art of getting other people to cook for her. She is currently in the running for the highly coveted "Most Overachieving TA" Award, as well as the (less competitive) "I Have Worked With Will Ryan for 4 Years and He Still Thinks My Name is Kathleen Blakesley" Certificate.

Community Involvement

 * School of Social Science Student Member

-SS Curriculum Committe Member S08

-SS Student Group Signer F09

-SS Reappointments Committee F09

'''Description
'' After the Whole Damn War, Why Am I Scared Now? '' In her Division III Katelyn will be researching how Americans resumed daily life after World War II. Katelyn wants to know what American society expected from the soldiers when they returned home and what the American soldiers believed they were returning to. She wants to explore what the American soldiers hopes were when they returned home. Did they expect to come home, find a wife, start a family and find a job or are these only visions we have today? Most importantly, she wants to explore how did the soldier's war experience shape post-war American society?

Advanced Learning Activities
Fall 2009


 * Independent Study writing about her experience as an intern at the United States Holocaust Memoiral Museum in conjuction with The Theory and Practice of Therapeutic Writing


 * Teaching Assistant for Women's Fabrication Skills

Spring 2010


 * Teaching Assistant for Writing the Civil War

Description
A Division II focused on the history of World War II entitled Narrow Squeaks and Unexpected Turns: The World at War.

Studies
Spring 2009


 * Nexus-Topics in German Culture at Smith
 * Nazi Germany at Amherst College
 * Women's Fabrication Skills
 * Bicycle Maintence
 * The Atlantic World

JanTerm 2009


 * Spent listening to Yale Prof. David Blight's lectures on the Civil War in preparation for S10 Writing the Civil War.

Fall 2008


 * Holocaust Literature at Smith


 * Introduction to Military History at Amherst College
 * A Century of Irish and British Drama
 * Writing World War II as Teaching Assistant

Spring 2008


 * Biography and History: Radicalism, Anti-Communism&amp; Internationalism in the 1950s


 * The Laboratory Atop the Graveyard: Research Seminar in 20th Century Europe


 * The Past Recaptured: Photographs, Facts and Fictions, 1935-1943


 * Elections in Popular Culture

JanTerm 2008


 * Spent watching and taking notes on Ken Burn's The War in preparation for F08 Writing World War II.

Fall 2007


 * The American Right at Amherst College


 * Israel and Palestine


 * WWII &amp; U.S. Popular Culture

Studies
Spring 2007


 * Public Diplomacy


 * Mysteries of Petersburg


 * Ever Since Darwin


 * International Regimes

JanTerm 2007


 * New Media Innovations/Future

Fall 2006


 * Introduction to Media Production: Images of War


 * Intermediate Spanish I


 * Lives of Commitment


 * Writing World War II (Tutorial)