Karyl E. Ketchum, Ph. D.

Biography

Dr. Ketchum is Department Chair of Women and Gender Studies at California State University, Fullerton. She has published internationally in some of the most influential academic journals and presses in her field. Topics include feminist and queer aesthetics in film and art; racial and gendered biases in biometric technologies; pathologizing discourses of the feminized body in art and popular culture; and the deployment of race and gender toward galvanizing and sustaining global online social movements. Her work in the intersections of technology, visuality, and gender has also included participating in FemTechNet, a network of scholars, artists, and activists known for its feminist, decentralized pedagogy experiments.

Ketchum's book, Gender Diversity and LGBTQ Inclusion in K-12 Schools: A Guide to Supporting Students, Changing Lives (Routledge), is a first-resource for educators interested in creating educational spaces and institutions responsive to the needs of women and LGBTQIA+ students. Her current book project is a historiography documenting the use and misuse of gender, race, class, and sexuality in the founding narratives of several of the most influential museums and cultural institutions in the U.S.

Dr. Ketchum is committed to creating and sustaining institutions and systems attuned to the needs of minoritized and historically marginalized groups. Toward this end, she routinely acts as a pro bono expert witness for women and LGBTQIA+ refugees seeking asylum in the U.S. and created and implemented a national training program for Immigration and Customs Enforcement Officers working with these same asylum seekers. In her role as a founding member and President of the Orange County Equality Coalition School Compliance Task Force, she led a class action against the California Dept of Education for their mishandling of complaints of discrimination by California public school students. Settled out of court, this resulted in large-scale procedural changes in California's schools. She has also received special commissions and grants from the American Psychological Association and from the California Department of Mental Health.

Professor Ketchum serves on the board of directors for DAP Health (formerly Desert AIDS Project) and The Human Trust, a nonprofit fiduciary AI trust dedicated to women's health and well being. She has held multiple community leadership positions, including as an advisor to Chapman University's Center for Global Law and Development - LGBTQ Rights and Feminism Division, on the Executive Board for The Orange County Equality Coalition, and for The LGBT Center of Orange County. Dr. Ketchum is a reviewer for The M. Katherine Baird Darmer Equality Scholarship for law students. Her awards include Planned Parenthood of California's Advocacy Award, the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California Vern Bulloughs Social Justice Award, the Rich Cook Community Bridge Award, the Orange County Lavender Bar Association Equality Award, the OCEC Excellence in Leadership Award, and the Women for Orange County Social Justice Award.