Contact Information
Davenport Hall - Rm 385
607 S. Mathews Ave.
Urbana, IL 61801
Research Interests
- Linguistic Anthropology, Sociolinguistics, African Diaspora Studies
- Race, Semiotics, Digital Space, Personhood, Gender, Language Ideology, Discourse, Hip Hop, Diaspora Studies
Research Description
I study the semiosis of race in young people's lives by conducting ethnographic research in different locations of the "African diaspora" (mostly digital or urban). My work specifically concerns the discourses and practices that constitute blackness, antiblackness, and anti-antiblackness.
One of my recent projects concerning digital subjectivity (there are a few) considers how uses of "emphatically black" and "intentionallly black" language and discourse in digital space function as public refusals of antiblack "raciolinguistic ideologies" (Rosa & Flores 2017) and semiotically, may help reconfigure racialized signs in significant ways.
I've worked extensively with young urbanites in Monrovia, Liberia and Philadelphia, PA in the US, and I'm in the early stages of a new project with my cultural community: the Gullah/Geechee of coastal and insular South Carolina.
Education
- PhD, University of Pennsylvania (2015)
- BS, Cornell University (2000)
Additional Campus Affiliations
Associate Professor, Anthropology
Acting Director of Graduate Studies, Anthropology
Associate Professor, Linguistics
Associate Professor, Center for African Studies
External Links
Highlighted Publications
Smalls, K. A. (2020). Race, SIGNS, and the Body: Towards a Theory of Racial Semiotics. In H. S. Alim, A. Reyes, & P. Kroskrity (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Language and Race (pp. 233-260). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190845995.013.15
Smalls, K. A. (2021). Fat, Black, and Ugly: The Semiotic Production of Prodigious Femininities. Transforming Anthropology, 29(1), 12-28. https://doi.org/10.1111/traa.12208
Smalls, K. A. (2018). Fighting Words: Antiblackness and Discursive Violence in an American High School. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 28(3), 356-383. https://doi.org/10.1111/jola.12197
Smalls, K. A. (2018). Languages of Liberation: Digital Discourses of Emphatic Blackness. In N. Avineri, L. R. Graham, E. J. Johnson, R. C. Riner, & J. Rosa (Eds.), Language and Social Justice in Practice (pp. 52-60). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315115702-7
Smalls, K. A. (2010). Flipping the Script: (Re)constructing Personhood through Hip Hop Languaging in a U.S. High School. Working Papers in Educational Linguistics, 25(2), 35.
Recent Publications
Smalls, K. A. (2024). Telling blackness: Young liberians and the raciosemiotics of contemporary black diaspora. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197697573.001.0001
Smalls, K. A., & Davis, J. L. (2023). Language and Racism. In A. Duranti, R. George, & R. C. Riner (Eds.), A New Companion to Linguistic Anthropology (pp. 560-576). (Wiley Blackwell Companions to Anthropology). Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119780830.ch31
Davis, J. L., & Smalls, K. A. (2021). Dis/possession Afoot: American (Anthropological) Traditions of Anti‐Blackness and Coloniality. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 31(2), 275-282. https://doi.org/10.1111/jola.12327
Smalls, K. A. (2021). Fat, Black, and Ugly: The Semiotic Production of Prodigious Femininities. Transforming Anthropology, 29(1), 12-28. https://doi.org/10.1111/traa.12208
Smalls, K. A., Spears, A. K., & Rosa, J. (2021). Introduction: Language and White Supremacy. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 31(2), 152-156. https://doi.org/10.1111/jola.12329