Michelle Kim Gardner 김미희

"Half" Korean born and raised in western North Carolina. I am currently a Research Fellow in the Department of American Studies at Yale University. Trained in political theory, I work primarily within critical ethnic studies to bridge the two fields through an analysis of the intertwined histories of racial capitalism and postcolonial racial formations. My current research project, titled Relational Formations of Race in the Afterlives of the Korean War, examines how the war’s racialized logic of martial citizenship produced the conditions for popular narratives surrounding so-called “interethnic conflict” in urban centers and contributed to the rise of Korean American conservatism. Through this work, I aim to illuminate the enduring entanglements between militarism, race, and diaspora in shaping political subjectivities.