Kong Pheng Pha

Kong Pheng Pha is an interdisciplinary scholar and educator whose academic research, writing, and public scholarship explores the histories and politics of refugee migration, radical queer, feminist, and anti-racist social movements, activism, and community organizing, legacies of U.S. war and empire, minoritized student experiences in the modern university, and Asian American racial, gender, sexual, and queer formations, with particular attention on Hmong and Southeast Asian communities in the United States. He is the author of Queering the Hmong Diaspora: Racial Subjectivity and the Myth of Hyperheterosexuality (UWA Press, 2025), which examines Hmong racial and gendered subject formation and cultural transformations against the backdrop of U.S. sexual and queer liberalism. He is also currently writing a book of personal narrative nonfiction essays about Hmong’s place in a revolutionary America, and another book on the visuality of invisibility, secrecy, and statelessness.  

Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and in collaboration with a team of community curators across the state of Wisconsin, he was co-project director of the community-based exhibit Los Tsev: Cia Siab (Hope) in Wisconsin, which was exhibited in Oshkosh, Milwaukee, De Pere, Eau Claire, Wausau, and Madison, Wisconsin to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Hmong and Southeast Asian resettlement in the United States. He is also a co-principal investigator on the participatory action research project Our HMoob American College Paj Ntaub conducted with student activists and education scholars exploring HMoob American undergraduate experiences, which is funded by a $2.2 million Racial Equity in STEM Education grant from the National Science Foundation. He received his B.A. in Psychology, Sociology, History, and Asian American Studies and Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Minnesota.  

Selected Publications:

“STEM Asianization and the Racialization of the Educational Experiences of Asian American College Students.” Race Ethnicity and Education (2025). (Co-authored with  Matthew Wolfgram, Stacey J. Lee, Chundou Her, Bailey B. Smolarek, and Choua P. Xiong) 

“Violent Invisibilities: The Battle for Hmong and Southeast Asian American Legibility in Higher Education.” AGITATE! Journal (2024). (Co-authored with Kaochi Pha and Dee Pha) 

“Testimony as Justice: An Anti-Carceral Transformative Feminist Response to Sexual Violence and Abusive International Marriages.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies (2023).  

“Colorblindness as Anti-Asian Racism in the Midwest.” American Studies (2023). 

“De-Exceptionalizing Sunisa Lee: Uneven Gymnastics and a Hmong American State-less Critique.” American Quarterly (2023). (Co-authored with Kari Smalkoski) 

“Unsettled Mourning.” In Sparked: George Floyd, Racism, and the Progressive Illusion, edited by Walt Jacobs, Wendy Thompson Taiwo, and Amy August (2021).  

“Two Hate Notes: Deportations, COVID-19, and Xenophobia against Hmong Americans in the Midwest.” Journal of Asian American Studies (2020). 

“The Politics of Vernacular Activism: Hmong Americans Organizing for Social Justice in Minnesota.” Amerasia Journal (2019). 

“‘Minnesota is Open to Everything’: Queer Hmong and the Politics of Community Formation in the Diaspora.” Minnesota History (Summer 2019). 

“Finding Queer Hmong America: Gender, Culture, and Happiness Among Hmong LGBTQ.” In Claiming Place: On the Agency of Hmong Women, edited by Chia Youyee Vang, Faith Nibbs, and Ma Vang (2016).