About
Kimberly Hess is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Michigan. She uses comparative-historical methods to study the culture and politics of inclusion and exclusion within states and nations. She is in the process of completing an article on the political inclusion of the indigenous Maori in colonial New Zealand. Kim's dissertation considers how social, historical, and regional contexts affect who and what are included in contemporary US social studies education and how differences in these inclusions relate to different narratives of American history and national identity. She uses a comparative analysis of all 50 states’ K-12 social studies curriculum standards to identify national-, regional-, and state-level patterns in social studies education in terms of minority representation, characterizations of US history and government, and portrayals of American national identity. Kim's dissertation has been supported by the U of M Institute for Social Research Robert Kahn Fellowship for the Scientific Study of Social issues and the National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship.
Kim has been the lead instructor for Intro to Sociological Theory (Soc305), Sociological Research Methods (Soc310), Sociology Graduate Student Instructor Training (Soc993), and a first-year writing course of her own design, Defining Nations and Nationalism (Eng125). She has also been the Graduate Student Instructor (GSI) for Intro to Sociology, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, Sociology of Culture: From Kennedys to Kardashians, and Sociological Research Methods, and she has independently led a team of undergraduate research assistants working on her dissertation research through the Sociology Undergraduate Research Opportunity program (Soc394) every semester since Fall 2019. Kim won the University of Michigan Department of Sociology Exceptional Graduate Student Instructor award in 2019 and 2022 and the Rackham Graduate School Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor award in 2022.
Within the Sociology Department, Kim has served as the Graduate Student Mentor, an Online Course Consultant, an Anti-racist Pedagogy Course Consultant, a Graduate School and Beyond Series Co-Chair, and the Social Theory Workshop Graduate Coordinator. In recognition of her contributions to the department community, Kim won the Sociology Graduate Student (SGS) Graduate Student Recognition Award in 2021.
Based on her work as an Online Course Consultant in 2020, Kim also has a coauthored piece recently published in Teaching Sociology on online teaching in the UM Sociology Department during the COVID-19 pandemic.
