Welcome! I’m so happy you’re here.

My name is Julie Mi-Yeong Kidder and I am a current Ph.D. Candidate and Instructor of First-Year Writing at Carnegie Mellon University. I hold a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center and am licensed to practice law in the District of Columbia. I have a decade of experience in interdisciplinary research and writing. My research is situated at the intersections of legal rhetorics, narrative hermeneutics, race, and gender.

My dissertation seeks to understand constructions of multiracial identity and rights through a rhetorical analysis of legal narratives. I am interested in how the specific phenomena of multiracial individuals bring together ontological questions of racial purity and bodily borders with legal processes of mis/recognition based on gender, class, and race. I draw on narratology, critical race theory, feminist rhetorical theory, and legal rhetorics. Broadly, I am concerned with how rhetorical narratives circulate in the law, and how institutions use racializing and gendering discourse to legitimize and authorize power.

As a strong believer in creating positive change, I regularly work on DEI initiatives and practice anti-racist pedagogy. I am, at my heart, a pragmatist who believes that law can be a force for good through the recognition of individuals and communities.

I currently reside in Pittsburgh, PA, with my partner, two children, and two bunnies. When not deep in the library stacks, I can be found puttering around my garden, haunting local coffee shops, or running up and down the neighborhood hills.