Departments
Courses Taught
HMS 347: The Artist's Manifesto
HMS 358: Literary Monsters
HMS 415: Who Knows? An Introduction to Health Humanities
HMS 362: Fools & Folly in Dramatic Literature
Education
PhD English, University of California, Los Angeles
BA English & Comparative Literature and History, Columbia University
Awards & Distinctions
Student-elected commencement speaker, The Bay School of San Francisco (2017)
UCLA Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Assistant Award (2012)
Q&A
What is your hometown?
Oakland, CA
Who were your major teachers?
Amanda Claybaugh, Jonathan Grossman, Marjorie Kagawa-Singer
What is a favorite quote that you repeatedly tell students?
I'll dodge the question and instead quote a student who once told me, with real disgust, "You are SUCH a stickler for specificity."
What question do you wish students would ask sooner rather than later?
Can I show you this rough draft?
What was a turning point in your career?
Becoming a Visiting Scholar at Cedars-Sinai Cancer, where I saw that the writing and teaching skills I'd built over my whole career worked in a new context
If you weren't a musician or teacher, what do you think you would be doing now?
I would be a reporter! I love asking questions.
What is your daily practice routine?
I try to write a little bit (even as little as 10 minutes) each day on at least one of my projects. Sometimes I'll turn the ideas over in my head while waiting for BART or washing the dishes, just to keep the power flowing through the circuits. And I do practice piano a few times a week. I took lessons until I went to college and have come back, decades later... with much more of a beginner's mindset.
What is your unrealized project?
A prolific fruit and vegetable garden
What do you think makes a concert experience unique?
Seeing students who have collaborated nimbly in class discussions collaborate dazzlingly on stage
What are your most important collaborations?
- Co-creating curriculum with HMS's language faculty and College Writing faculty has been my most important collaboration at SFCM
- Co-creating U-GROW, a research education program for California State University students with Darrah Kuratani, Ph.D., Annalyn Valdez-Dadia, DrPH, and Sherry Kidd, M.Ed.
Biography
Katherine Isokawa is Professor and Chair of Humanities & Sciences at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Her approach to teaching the humanities was shaped by the Music Humanities and Art Humanities classes she was required to take as a freshman at Columbia. There she learned to listen and look carefully, to place artistic works within their traditions and times, and to answer big questions by gathering small, increasingly complex observations.
Her SFCM courses, which include The Artist's Manifesto, Literary Monsters and Monstrosities, and Who Knows? An Introduction to Health Humanities, ask students to use these skills across literature, ethnic studies, history, public health, and more. What continues to inspire her is her students' willingness to take creative risks: they read aloud with brio, emote as they stage tableaux from dramatic works, and embrace the absurdity of abstruse and difficult texts.
Isokawa holds a Ph.D. in English from UCLA, where the Academic Senate recognized her teaching with the Distinguished Teaching Award, and a B.A. from Columbia College. Her research and teaching interest in health humanities is grounded in practice. Since 2021 she has taught scientific communication at Cedars-Sinai Cancer in Los Angeles, and she has taught for NIH-funded research programs around the country since 2008, including at UCSF, UCLA, and the University of Texas. She lives in Oakland, where she grew up, with her family.