Kathryn Sorrells

Kathryn Sorrells is Professor of Communication Studies at California State University, Northridge (CSUN), and is currently serving as Department Chair. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in intercultural communcation, critical pedagogy, performance, cultural studies, and feminist theory. She combines critical/cultural studies and postcolonial perspectives to explore issues of culture, race, gender, class, and sexuality. Kathryn grew up in Georgia; has lived in different regions of the United States; has studied and worked in Brazil, Japan, Turkey and China; and has traveled extensively in Asia, Europe, and parts of Latin America. The critical, social justice approach she uses to study and practice intercultural communication is informed by her experiences growing up in the South during the tumultuous and transformative civil rights movement and her subsequent participation in the antiwar; women’s; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT); and labor and immigrant rights movements. Kathryn has published a variety of articles related to intercultural communication, globalization, and social justice and is co-editor along with Sachi Sekimoto of Globalizing Intercultural Communication: A Reader (Sage, 2015). She has been instrumental in organizing a campus-wide initiative on Civil Discourse and Social Change at CSUN aimed at developing students’ capacities for civic engagement and social justice. Kathryn is a recipient of numerous national, state, and local community service awards for founding and directing Communicating Common Ground, an innovative service learning project that provided students opportunities to develop creative alternatives to intercultural conflict. Additionally, Kathryn has experience as a consultant and trainer for nonprofit, profit and educational organizations in the areas of intercultural communication and multicultural learning.