Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies Professor Miliann Kang Receives ADVANCE Faculty Peer Mentoring Award

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Miliann Kang, professor in the Department of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies, has received the 2023 ADVANCE Faculty Peer Mentoring Award for the College of Humanities & Fine Arts. She received the award during the UMass ADVANCE annual distinguished lecture held on Tuesday, March 28, at 4 p.m. in the Old Chapel. 

Nominated by Associate Professor of English Asha Nadkarni, Kang is recognized for her the critically important work in mentoring and supporting her colleagues’ professional development and success.   

Laurel Smith-Doerr, principal investigator for UMass ADVANCE, says Kang's work makes an “enormous difference to the success of your colleagues, and has made the university a more inclusive and equitable place.” 

In addition to her role in the UMass Amherst Department of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies, Kang is affiliated faculty in the sociology program and part of the Asian & Asian American Studies Certificate. She studies Asian American feminisms, immigrant women’s work and labor issues, race and reproductive politics, and gender, work and family issues in transnational contexts. 

Her book, "The Managed Hand: Race, Gender and the Body in Beauty Service Work" (University of California Press, 2010), examines migrant women’s labor and the social interactions that occur in Asian-owned New York nail salons growing world of the beauty service industry. The book, which sheds light on the complex racialized and gendered processes at work in the growing beauty service industry, won four book awards from the American Sociological Association, as well as the Sara Whaley book prize from the National Women’s Studies Association.  

Kang’s latest book project, entitled “Mother Other: Race and Reproductive Politics in Asian America” (under contract with University of California Press) explores the racial politics of mothering and the work and family issues at play for Asian American women.  

In 2017 and 2018, Kang was a Fulbright Senior Scholar with Ewha University and a Korea Foundation Fellow with Seoul National University, researching work and family issues for Asian and Asian American women in transnational contexts. Her research has also been supported by the Worldwide University Network, the American Association of University Women, the Ford Foundation, the Institute for Asian American Studies at UMass Boston, the Labor Relations and Research Center at UMass Amherst, and the Social Science Research Council. 

Kang graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University with a B.A. in Social Studies, and she received her Ph.D. in Sociology from New York University.