If you’ve ever stepped foot on Agnes Scott’s campus, you likely know Zoe Katz. She’s been instilling spirit in the class of 2019 as our Black Cat Chair for all four years in a row, and her digital skills in the CDVL (Center for Digital and Visual Learning) are probably the reason you passed your Summit 400 class — or at least she helped you make your digital portfolio look way nicer. Zoe’s larger-than-life personality shines through in her work in the History department and her everyday life. I found Zoe in her natural environment, the CDVL, working on a paper that was spread across two monitors. Because Zoe is such an open book, I knew I couldn’t just ask the usual simplistic questions — but we started with the basics.
Zoe Katz
Hometown: Binghamton, NY/Oconee County, GA
Major: History — Zoe wrote a senior seminar project last semester called Pirates, Jews, and Pirate Jews: the Relationship of Pirates and Jews in the Development of Colonial Jamaica.
Campus involvement: Vice President of Sigma Alpha Iota, a women’s music fraternity; Black Cat Chair for Class of 2019; Collegiate Chorale; Sotto Voce; and the notorious and lovable Pestle Board.
Celebrating when we finally won Black Cat in 2018! Photo Credit: Zoe Katz
HerCampus: I’m going to borrow this question from someone I worked in a restaurant with last night. What color is your energy right now?
Zoe Katz: It’s very, like, navy blue, I think.
What kind of music have you been listening to recently?
ZK: Have you ever heard of Jukebox the Ghost?
Yeah, actually! I haven’t heard that name since like 2012.
ZK: I’m obsessed with them. They’re actually coming to Atlanta in February, and I’m probably going to go to that concert. But I’ve been listening to a lot of indie pop rock. That’s kind of my genre. And I love Taylor Swift — I just listen to a lot of Taylor Swift, too.
What’s something you think people don’t really know about you?
ZK: I’m a very open book. Um, I think a lot of people don’t know that I really like to write. I was almost a Creative Writing minor, but I couldn’t finish it in time.
You had a play in last year’s Writers’ Festival, right?
ZK: I did, but I actually don’t like to write plays. I write novels, and I’ve written three of them.
Would you like to share a little of what the novels are about?
ZK: The last one I wrote is really the only one that’s any good, and it’s kind of this really long character study about two boys in their freshman year of college who are roommates, and how they fall in love and then ruin each other’s lives.
Sounds awesome.
ZK: Yeah, my entire goal with it was to make neither of them the bad guy, and to both be kind of equally terrible people. […] I think they both have their pros and cons.
What is your dream job?
ZK: I don’t know, I have a lot of dream jobs. I would love to be a novelist, I would love to be, like, a history communicator, and make digital history accessible, I would love to work in the entertainment industry… there’s just so many potential careers.
Zoe, in a curiously high-quality photograph, after having time-traveled to 1838. Photo credit: Zoe Katz
I almost forgot to ask you about your summer internship in the year 1838! Can you tell me a little about that?
ZK: Yes! I applied for a historical interpretation internship at Old Sturbridge Village in Sturbridge, MA, and spent the summer as a “living history” interpreter, meaning I learned historic tasks like hearth cooking, gardening, churning butter, cheese making, knitting, quilting, and then educated museum visitors on what life was like in rural New England in the early 1800s. I also wrote a post on my digital portfolio about it.
In my humble opinion, Zoe is one of the sweetest people on campus, so if you ever need help with a computer program, or just want to gush about your love of pirates, I would highly suggest striking up a conversation with Zoe.