Mijeong Mimi Kim specializes in second & foreign language pedagogy and material development for Foreign Language & Heritage Language learners of Korean.
Mimi Kim is a Teaching Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Washington University in St. Louis, where she serves as Director of Undergraduate Studies and previously served for many years as Coordinator of the Korean Language Program. Since joining the university in 2002, she has taught Korean at all levels, developed curricula for both traditional and heritage language learners, and established Communities of Practice that foster collaboration among diverse language faculty and students.
Dr. Kim's areas of interest include language pedagogy, curriculum development, and technology-enhanced instruction. Drawing on principles of critical pedagogy, she designs content-based curricula that engage students with Korean culture through various forms of media, fostering both linguistic proficiency and cultural agency.
She is the co-author of several textbooks, including the You Speak Korean OER series (University of Pennsylvania, 2023), Advanced Korean (Routledge, 2021), and Tigers, Fairies, and Gods: Enchanting Folktales from Korea (Kong & Park, 2019). Her teaching emphasizes the use of literary and popular media to support language development and cross-cultural understanding.
Dr. Kim has served as an officer and Executive Board member of the American Association of Teachers of Korean (AATK), and has contributed to national initiatives including the AATK’s Standards-Based Korean Language Curriculum project (2012–2015) and the national committee of the Korean Honor Society (KHS).
She strives to integrate cultural literacy into language education through student-centered, contextualized pedagogy, recognizing the transformative potential of language learning in developing global citizenship.