Lydia Burleson

Lydia Burleson (she/her) is a PhD Candidate in English, minoring in the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity. Her dissertation project offers an intellectual history of the American Depression era that centers the entanglement between modern racialization and labor extraction methods. More broadly, her work interrogates what it means to be representable in the media, and she is especially interested in moments where representation and lived experience diverge. Having grown up in poverty in rural Texas, Lydia is committed to increasing access to higher education and the humanities. She is also an avid hiker (15 national parks in 2025!) and a fitness fiend.