Kari Smalkoski
224 Church St SE
Minneapolis,
MN
55455
Dr. Kari Smalkoski is assistant professor and director of undergraduate studies in Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies. She is also core faculty in Asian American Studies and affiliate faculty in American Studies. Her current book project is a multi-sited ethnography that examines the impact of gender, race, and sports on Asian American youth. She is the director and co-founder (with Dr. Jigna Desai) of Minnesota Youth Story Squad, a community engaged, K-12 university partnership. She is currently principal investigator and co-principal investigator on local, national, and federal grants. She previously was a member of the faculty leadership team for the grant project, MN Transform, awarded in 2021 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's Just Futures Initiative. This $5 million dollar higher education initiative is the largest grant the University of Minnesota has received from the Mellon Foundation. Dr. Smalkoski plans to offer one of the first courses on Taylor Swift at the University of Minnesota. She co-developed the course with Juhae Song, a freshman at Stanford University, and Dr. Smalkoski's former high school intern. You can read Dr. Smalkoski's most recent publication in American Quarterly, De-exceptionalizing Sunisa Lee: Uneven Gymnastics and a Hmong American State-less Critique.