Kate received Bachelor’s degrees in Violin Performance and History of the Near East from the University of California, San Diego. She also completed an M.A. and Ph.D. in ethnomusicology at the University of California, Riverside. Prior to joining the Honors College Interdisciplinary Faculty, she was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at Macalester College and has also taught at several universities in California. Her teaching and research specialties engage the intersections of music, gender, race, and sexuality in North American Celtic and popular music cultures. Her current work situates queer country music and dance culture as a site for the negotiation of regionally-specific nexus of gendered, sexualized, and ethnicized identities. She teaches ethnomusicological-based courses in the arts and humanities.