Kevin Gomez-Gonzalez ’23 named to National Humanities Leadership Council

by Barbara Wiedemann

The National Humanities Center (NHC) headquartered in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, welcomed 17 undergraduates to its inaugural National Humanities Leadership Council in January 2022, including UNC Hussman School of Media and Journalism junior Kevin Gomez-Gonzalez ’23. Gomez-Gonzalez was named alongside two other UNC-Chapel Hill undergraduates, Fowota Morton and Denee Dapremont, from the College of Arts & Sciences.

Participants were nominated by faculty from colleges and universities across the country. They’ll receive professional development and mentoring from leading scholars and other humanities professionals in a series of virtual opportunities scheduled throughout the spring 2022 semester.

Jacqueline Kellish, public engagement coordinator and director of the COVID-19 Oral History Initiative for the NHC, says “As part of the Council experience, students will have the opportunity to hold collaborative discussions and seek scholarly and pre-professional guidance on opportunities and trends across topics of contemporary relevance in the humanities, which include, for example, the digital humanities, health humanities, the creative and performing arts and intersections between the humanities and social justice activism.“ 

Kellish, who coordinates the inaugural 17-person council, says the undergraduates from around the country will also have an opportunity to work on individual or small group projects that help them to develop a particular skill, learn more about a new area, or create a product or pursue an inquiry that they have not yet found a place for within their collegiate studies.

“These projects are meant to be open-ended and students will receive structured support and feedback from me and from my colleague, Hugo Ljungbäck, a master’s candidate in Studio Art at UNC-Chapel Hill and a current HPG Humanities Futures Fellow,” says Kellish. “They will also have access to resources and expertise in particular fields through staff, programming, and our network of former Fellows at the National Humanities Center.”

Kevin Gomez-Gonzalez

Carolina junior Gomez-Gonzalez is a Willow Spring, North Carolina, native. His Mexico-born parents raised him in a Spanish-speaking household.

“They are all about education,” he says. “They’d say ‘do the best you can now; we’ll figure it out,’” he recalls of their dreams for he and his younger sister to attend college one day. Thanks in part to the support provided by generous University scholarship, Gomez-Gonzalez ended up fulfilling the dream when he enrolled at UNC. 

The first generation college student has hit the ground running since he came to Chapel Hill the summer before his first Fall 2019 semester, jumping into the journalism track at UNC Hussman and adding a Latina/o Studies minor. He’s exploring courses in anthropology, women’s and gender studies, English and religious studies with scholars like Associate Professor Angela Stuesse in Carolina’s Anthropology department (ANTH 290: COVID-19 and Inequality), Study of the Americas Associate Director Hannah Gill in the Latin American Studies department (LTAM 390: Heritage and Migration in North Carolina) and Graduate Teaching Fellow Israel Dominguez in Religious Studies (REL 245: Religions on the U.S/Mexico Borderlands). 

Gomez-Gonzalez is a student ambassador for the Latina/o Studies Program. He values the opportunity to study with its Founding Director Maria DeGuzmán (ENGL 666: Queer Latinx Literature and Photography) and learn from one of his mentors there, Teaching Assistant Professor Geovani Ramírez.

The Carolina student was nominated for the Council by the Institute of African American Research (IAAR) at Carolina. Gomez-Gonzalez is a student research fellow with IAAR’s Student Learning to Advance Truth and Equity (SLATE). With the help of Associate Professor Stuesse, who has become another valued mentor, he designed a community-based participatory research project on the experiences of poultry workers during the pandemic. Gomez-Gonzalez also enrolled in “MEJO 441: Diversity and Communication” with UNC Hussman Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Julian Scheer Term Associate Professor Trevy McDonald through IAAR-SLATE.

“Kevin is an up-and-comer at our school,” says UNC Hussman Associate Professor Paul Cuadros. “He is the type of person who is looking to challenge himself and get the most out of his education here. He keeps his options open as to where he’s going — journalism, law or another area. His future is really open to him.”

In Cuadros’ “MEJO 253: Introduction to Public Affairs” course, Cuadros recalls, Gomez-Gonzalez chose the labor beat.

“That’s a tough area to report on. Kevin took it on with gusto and did a lot of great reporting on the issue in North Carolina,” Cuadros recalls. “And then COVID 19 hit, and that was another lesson about labor issues in the state.”

Since then, Gomez-Gonzalez says, his stories primarily cover workers’ rights advocacy efforts, particularly in industries with predominately Latina/o workforces, and focus on the intersections of labor and issues of class, race and gender.

“My journalism is not separate from my academic research or my ideas for my future,” says the UNC Hussman student. “I’m a curious person, and I continue to learn and explore. It all comes together in wanting to understand how we can learn from our communities, and from various fields of study, to understand the world around us and help give voice to what our communities are experiencing.”

He’s pleased to have the chance to regularly meet with fellow humanities students from across the country. Their first virtual Council meeting was held on January 20.

The connections he and fellow Council members are making with scholars and humanities professionals reminds him of a one-credit “IDST 184: Research Beyond Academia” UNC Office for Undergraduate Research course he took during his first year at Carolina. He’s once again being exposed to scholars and research concepts that are formative to how he approaches his future.

“As journalists, we go out in the field and perform research of a sort,” he says when describing why the National Humanities Leadership Council is such an intriguing opportunity. “Speak to people in the field. Gather history. Review statistics. Conduct our own inquiries. That’s the kind of research-based work that fulfills journalism’s potential. We may fall short, we may not look at it that way. But we do go through many of the same processes and same challenges that a researcher goes through. That sounds like community-based journalism to me.”

The newly minted Council member closes the conversation by bringing things down to earth.

“What do I know? I’m an early career journalist. I can afford to be aspirational,” he says.

As for his future, he says that journalism is his first and main pursuit and that any path he takes will be driven by his journalism work.

College continues to be “Unlike anything I could’ve expected. It’s an incredibly enriching time,” he says as he charts another year-and-a-half as an undergraduate at Carolina, and thinks about what’s next.