Kate Alexander
Kate Alexander is an ethnomusicologist specializing in the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality in North American social dance communities. She has worked previously to map formations of ethnic whiteness in Cape Breton’s traditional Scottish music and dance culture, while her current research focuses on American LGBTQ country western dance and rodeo networks. In framing issues of gender, whiteness, and place phenomenologically, Dr. Alexander investigates how the diffuse LGBTQ country western community creates meaning, coherence, and sociality for its participants, with implications for larger questions of race, class, and regionalism in contemporary America. Her work has been published in journals such as MUSICultures and the Yearbook for Traditional Music. She teaches interdisciplinary courses on sound, music, visual art, and culture.
Degrees
Ph.D. and M.A. in Ethnomusicology (University of California, Riverside); B.A. in History of the Near East, and B.A. in Violin Performance (University of California, San Diego)
Publications
“Straight to the Heart: Heteronormativity, Flirtation, and Autoethnography at Home and Away” In Queering the Field: Sounding Out Ethnomusicology, edited by Gregory Barz and William Cheng (Oxford University Press, 2020)
"Politely Different: Queer Presence in Country Music and Dancing" (Yearbook for Traditional Music, 2018)
“Cape Breton Girl: Performing Cape Breton at Home and Away with Natalie MacMaster” (MUSICultures, 2016)
Courses
HNRS 160D4: Culture, Place, Identity: Musical Heritage in North America