Xena Becker is the LGBTQ+ Digital Humanities Fellow at the Atkins Library. She is working with the Special Collections and University Archives to create a digital timeline of important events in LGBTQ+ history in Charlotte. The goal of the project is to showcase materials and identify gaps in the current collections. She plans to pursue a career as a rare books and special collections librarian and is especially interested in teaching with these materials.
She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Comparative Literature with a Minor in Education Studies from New York University, where she conducted research on the history of LGBTQ activism at the school and its relationship to broader queer community organizing in Greenwich Village. While at NYU, she worked at the Fales Library and Special Collections. Her interest in librarianship began with a class co-taught by English faculty and the Librarian for Printed Books at Fales titled “Papyrus to PDF: An Introduction to Book History Now.” She currently works as the Graduate Assistant at the Scholarly Commons and the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the University of Illinois. She is eager to use her experiences this summer to expand her expertise in digital humanities and digital public history.