Meet the Faculty: Dr. Holly Kent

Welcome to our series of news stories about our faculty. Throughout the year, you'll get to learn about their interests and any other interesting facts about themselves that they like to share.

Dr. Holly Kent serves as an Associate Professor in the Department of History and has been a part of UIS since 2011, following her PhD from Lehigh University. She is well-regarded by both students and faculty for her enthusiasm for the history of women, gender, and sexuality in the United States. In order to explore the intriguing aspects of Dr. Kent's life outside the classroom, we posed several questions to her. Here are her fascinating responses: 

1) How did you discover your love of history? 

I don’t remember a time before I was interested in history! But some early “aha” moments were reading the American Girl books (not surprisingly for a future fashion historian, Samantha and all of her giant hair bows was my favorite!), and doing a unit on Abigail Adams and Phillis Wheatley in one of my high school history classes. It was the first time I’d gotten to study women as central forces in U.S. history, and I was hooked! 

2) What do you like most about teaching at UIS? 

I very much appreciate our students’ energy, curiosity, and creativity. It’s a cliché that as teachers, we’re always learning from our students, but that’s a cliché that’s absolutely true! Every class I teach, I get new insights from my students, and they bring intriguing, fresh perspectives to all of the material I assign. Because our students are such dynamic and original thinkers, even material that I’ve taught many times never gets stale for me. 

3) What research interests/publications/conferences/etc. are you currently working towards? 

My main research interests are women in the abolitionist movement, and women and U.S. fashion culture. I’m currently finishing an article about the abolitionist Mattie Griffith (a fascinating figure who was an enslaver before she embraced the antislavery cause), and starting a new project about fashion writing in antebellum women’s rights periodicals (debates about how women should, and should not, dress were tremendously complex and controversial during this time period, as in all time periods, so there’s a lot to explore there!) 

4) What advice can you give to students about History as a field of study? 

Advice I’ve always loved that my grad school advisors gave me about historical study was to both follow my passions, while also remaining open to exploring new avenues and paths of intellectual inquiry. So, while it’s great when, say, picking a topic for a research paper to select something you’re deeply intrigued by, and know that you’re going to be excited to explore, it’s also worth keeping an open mind, and asking questions and diving into sources which are outside of your usual comfort zone.

5) If you could have lunch with any historical figure, who would you choose and why? 

I’d love to have lunch with Sarah Mapps Douglass. She was an amazing writer, lecturer, educator, abolitionist activist, and artist—I’d love to know more about all of her work and her life experiences, since she sadly didn’t leave a ton of autobiographical material behind.