Kit Hermanson

Kit Hermanson (they/them) is a historian and educator whose work investigates the many interactions of science, religion, and sex, and the interminable plight of people to make their bodies fit into the world– or the world fit around their bodies. They hold a PhD in Religion and Graduate Certificate in the Study of Sexuality and Gender from Columbia University. Their dissertation, Sex and the Soul: Science, Religion, and Non-Binary Gender in the Nineteenth-Century United States, explored how non-binary sex categories (such as “hermaphrodite”) were eradicated by scientists in late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries only to be reimagined and deployed by American Christian sects in search of otherwise gendered spiritual unity amidst the anti-romantic upheaval of nineteenth-century industrialization. They currently are in residence at Wheaton College as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies. They have also worked at and with cultural institutions such as New-York Historical, Museum of the City of New York, and local historical societies in pursuit of their passion for making the complex realities and work of history accessible, interesting, and enjoyable to anyone and everyone.