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Courses:
Gender & Technoculture-WMST 320; Gender and Globalization -WMST 205; Contested Sexualities-WMST 420; Feminist Theories-WMST480

Research Interests:
Cultural Studies, technology, new media & visual culture, Queer Theory, Semiotics, Postmodernism, theories of representation, cyberbullying

Biography:
Dr. Ketchum received her M.A. (with Distinction) and her Ph.D. in Cultural Studies at the University of California, Davis. Her research emphasis is on critical and theoretical analysis of technology and new media, specifically focusing on representations of race, gender, sexuality, class, and nation.  She is also a visual artist working within the intersection of critical theory, classical painting and new media. Dr. Ketchum has published and contributed to articles on technology and visual culture in the U.S., Germany, the U.K., and Italy. Her most recent publication, "Facegen and the Technovisual Politics of Embodied Surfaces," documents relationships among technologies of surveillance, facial recognition software, gender and racial profiling.

Dr. Ketchum's current work includes the on-going development of visibleworld.net. This free web hosting and development project means to apply technology in the interest of promoting social justice by using the highly visual medium of the Internet to connect people and ideas. The site is developed collaboratively among students in Dr. Ketchum’s Technoculture courses and the people and organizations represented. In addition, Dr. Ketchum is working on a monograph exploring the platforms and interfaces of technology and new media forms as they are constrained and enabled by vectors of power.

In the classroom, Dr. Ketchum and her students explore the poetics and politics of technologies ranging from Twitter and Facebook to experimental video, Photoshop, web design, and online virtual worlds. Her computer lab courses challenge students to strategically intervene in the workings of technology and the Internet: taking issue with censorship; contesting the "digital divide;" critiquing new media’s visual language; and affirming the Net as a democratic space of intellectual and creative freedom.