Kimberly D. McKee, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Integrative, Religious, and Intercultural Studies Department at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, MI. Her monograph, Disrupting Kinship: Transnational Politics of Korean Adoption in the United States (University of Illinois Press, 2019), examines the iinstitutional practice of international adoption and traces the origins of what she terms the transnational adoption industrial complex. Her second project explores how racialized and sexualized depictions of Asian/Asian American women circulate within the U.S. as a result of American militarism abroad and its impact on the female adoptee body. She also is the co-editor of Degrees of Difference: Reflections of Women of Color on Graduate School (University of Illinois Press, 2020).

McKee received her PhD from the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at The Ohio State University. While at Ohio State, she also worked closely with the Asian American Studies program. During the 2013-2014 academic year, McKee served as the Consortium for Faculty Diversity Postdoctoral Fellow at Grinnell College.

Her interest in Korean adoption and representations of Asian Americans in popular culture stems from her lived experience as a Korean American adoptee. During high school her essay, “The Other Sister” was published in the anthology, YELL-Oh! Girls: Emerging Voices Explore Culture, Identity, and Growing up Asian American. While an undergraduate McKee became a founding member of the Asian-interest sorority, Sigma Psi Zeta, Inc. at The George Washington University.