Kari Smalkoski
224 Church St SE
Minneapolis,
MN
55455
Dr. Kari Smalkoski is an assistant professor in Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies and Asian American Studies. Her current book project is a multi-sited ethnography that examines the impact of gender, race, and sports on Hmong American youth. She is co-founder (with Dr. Jigna Desai) and director 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. 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. Dr. Smalkoski plans to offer one of the first University of Minnesota's courses on Taylor Swift. She is co-developing the course with Juhae Song, a rising freshman at Stanford University, and Dr. Smalkoski's 2023-24 high school intern.
Dr. Smalkoski is on leave and will return spring semester, 2025.