Kaitlin E. Thomas

“You'll spend a significant amount of time chipping away at a research project, and so, in order to avoid the 'bubble gum chewed too long' effect or any sense of arduousness that people sometimes speak about when talking about research, it should be something that, even when you don't have to, you would still 'hang with.'”

Dr. Kaitlin E. Thomas is an Associate Professor of Spanish and the World Languages Coordinator at Norwich University. Her research focuses on 20th/21st century Hispanic cultural studies with an emphasis on borders, migration, performance, social media, and transcultural identity. The issues that most interest her as a scholar are the re-casted, re-negotiated, and emergent U.S. and Hispanic perspectives resulting from trans-border cultural and national fusion, documented and undocumented immigration to the U.S., the evolution and impact of domestic and international policies, and how these manifest within cultural spheres.

In addition to her formal training, Dr. Thomas has completed non-degree studies with the Council of International Education Exchange in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Sevilla, Spain; the Centro Panamericano de Idiomas in Guanacaste, Costa Rica; the Universidad Antonio de Nebrija in Madrid, Spain, and the Universidad Centroamericana “José Simeón Cañas” in La Libertad, El Salvador.

At Norwich, she teaches the courses Beginning Spanish I and II, Intermediate Spanish I and II, Advanced Spanish Conversation, Advanced Spanish Composition, the special topics classes Latinos/as in the U.S., Border Narratives, Immigration Nation, El Narco, Music and Politics in Latin America, Contemporary Cuba, and La Hashtag Nation. She frequently works with students as part of the Undergraduate Research Program, mentoring them through independent projects. Dr. Thomas is the founding organizer and chapter advisor of the Sigma Delta Pi Spanish Honors Fraternity on campus, and has served as a faculty fellow for the Center for Global Resilience and Security. Her research and writing have appeared in the Journal of Peace and War Studies, the Popular Culture Review, Hispania, Latin American and LatinX Visual Culture, Public Radio International, among other outlets.

Ph.D. Hispanic Studies, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom
M.A. Latin American & Spanish Language & Literature, NYU
B.A. Hispanic Studies, Washington College 
B.A. Music, Washington College

Kaitlin Thomas conducts research in 20th/21st century Hispanic cultural studies with an emphasis on borders, migration, performance, social media, and transcultural identity. The issues that most interest her as a scholar are the re-casted, re-negotiated, and emergent U.S. and Hispanic perspectives resulting from trans-border cultural and national fusion, (un)documented immigration to the U.S., the evolution and impact of domestic and international policies, and how these manifest within cultural spheres. 

Her research journey took a more circuitous route than many of her peers. After high school, she attended a small college on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, taking multiple language classes every semester and looking for internships out in the community where she could use Spanish. One of those internships wound up with the local public school system, where she worked as a bilingual liaison, migrant educator, school interventionist, interpreter, and more for several years after graduating. After a few years, graduate school took her to Madrid, Spain and then returned to the States to begin teaching at the university level while resuming some of the bilingual community liaison work before moving into a Ph.D. program and eventually to Norwich. 

Thomas actively mentors students, advising them to figure out what the question, issue, or subject is that gets you fired up and/or that you spend your free time looking in to, and pursue it as a research topic. She collaborates with colleagues at Norwich and beyond, including a team of researchers at UVM that is working on a five-year project titled, “Social Media Sentiment and Forced Migration Narratives."

HN101 Immigration Nation
SP121 Beginning Spanish I
SP122 Beginning Spanish II
SP205 Intermediate Spanish I
SP206 Intermediate Spanish II
SP301 Advanced Spanish Conversation
SP302 Advanced Spanish Composition
SP350 Music and Politics in Latin America
SP350 La Hashtag Nation
SP350 Contemporary Cuba
SP350 El Narco
SP350 Latinos/as in the U.S.
SP415 Border Narratives
SP421 Spanish Reading and Research

“El Peso Hero: Comic Book Protagonists of the (Un)Documented Experience”. Latinx Comics Studies: Critical and Creative Crossings, eds. Maite Urcaregui and Maria Fernanda Diaz-Basteris. April 2025.

“Musical subterfuge: The Salvadoran Civil War”. Music: Resistance and Memory, edited by Asīm Murat Occur, 2023, pp. 205-213.

“Pepe versus Kermit: A Memetic Battleground about Latino/a-centric Immigration and Policy”. Popular Culture Review, vol. 34, no. 1, spring 2023.