Bio
Beth Wittmann (she/they) is a critical environmental historian and researcher invested in fat and disability liberation whose interests center around social and historical constructions of health and nature.
Academic
Beth is a doctoral candidate in the Biology department at Colorado State University who collaborates often with faculty in the Human Dimensions of Natural Resources and Race, Gender, and Ethnic Studies departments.
She takes a critical lens to history to expose the ways fatphobia and ableism were built into nature spaces and how systems of oppression continue to create exclusionary outdoor experiences. They highlight present experiences of the fat and disabled community through qualitative research.
Instructor
Beth is also a co-designer and co-instructor of the biology graduate seminar course Recognizing and Addressing Oppression in the Sciences which approaches equity issues in STEM from a systemic lens. The course covers topics such as the history of race science and eugenics, ecofascism, the politics and expansive biology of sex/gender, medical racism, anti-fat bias, and Western science as a tool of colonialism.
Personal
Beth became a nature person growing up in the deciduous forests of Scranton, PA, a herpetologist in the lakes and mountains of Burlington, VT, and the person they are now in the social justice community of Fort Collins, Colorado. She lives and works in Fort Collins which is located on the traditional and ancestral homelands of many Indigenous Nations and Peoples, including the Nunt'zi (Ute), Hinono'eino' (Arapaho), and Tsistsistas (Cheyenne).
Inclusivity in field work, reading in the sun, poetry, art, family, and giving little gifts out of the blue are all very important to her.