Specialties: Asian American Studies, Japanese American incarceration, Critical Ethnic & Indigenous Studies, Literary & Cultural Studies, Ecocriticism
Mika Kennedy ("Dr. K") is Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies in the Center for the Study of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity. She came to Ithaca College in 2022 after teaching in the English Department at Kalamazoo College. She earned her PhD in English Language & Literature (with sub-specialties in Asian American Literature, Native Studies, and Ecocriticism) at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
While she received her BA from the University of California, San Diego, her initial "training toward PhD" took place outside of the classroom: from her leadership in UCSD's Nikkei Student Union, a student org; from an undergraduate research assistantship in Native Studies; and from the Nikkei Community Internship, based in San Jose, CA. Her current work continues to be informed by community organizing and public scholarship with Tsuru for Solidarity and the Japanese American Citizens League Detroit Chapter.
If there’s one thing she’d like you to know about Asian American Studies, it’s that the term “Asian American” originated as an explicitly political identity, as part of widespread movement work during the 1960s and 70s in the United States: As such, Asian American Studies has been relational and solidarity-driven from its inception. Just like Asian American Studies is American Studies, it is also African Diaspora Studies; Latina/o/x Studies; and Native American & Indigenous Studies. If you’d like to learn more about these intersections and possibilities, she’ll see you in class!
Dr. K's scholarly work takes these intersections seriously as well. Her current book project is about the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans and the ways this experience intersects not only with fantasies of the Western frontier, but also the fight for Native sovereignty. Her research has been supported by the James A. Winn Fellowship at the University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities, a Rackham Humanities Research Candidacy Fellowship, and the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies.
Outside of work, she loves animal-watching in her yard (foxes, coyotes, deer, rabbits, so many birds); bicycling fairly badly southeast of Ithaca; and driving her 230,000+ mile Subaru wagon all over creation.