Returning to her alma mater as an assistant professor of law, Kaori Kenmotsu ’22 brings to Mitchell Hamline a breadth of experience in the worlds of dance, theater, yoga, public policy, community organizing, teaching, and now law. For Kenmotsu, however, it’s all connected.
“Coming into it late in my career, law was another piece in my puzzle to an interdisciplinary approach,” she said.
Her early career as an economic development organizer in South Minneapolis profoundly shaped how she thought about difference and community. Being an arts educator working with youth across different backgrounds taught her to be centered and present while meeting her students where they were. Being a program director for a grant-making agency helped hone her writing strengths. And her skills as a performing artist allowed her to inhabit a mindful and creative perspective.
Kenmotsu’s position is one of six being added to the faculty in 2024-25 at Mitchell Hamline. This year, she will be teaching courses on negotiation and client counseling within the Dispute Resolution Institute.
In 2002, Kenmotsu began working at Hamline University as an adjunct faculty member in the theater and dance department, becoming a senior lecturer in 2007. “I’ve been in academia for 20-something years and have never really stayed in my lane,” she said. While teaching classes, Kenmotsu also started Hamline’s dance program, produced theater shows, served as faculty-affiliate in the leadership program, and developed courses in conflict studies, serving as co-director of the conflict studies program for several years.
“I’m very excited to see the intersection of law with all these fields,” she said. Her work has centered around creating community and understanding how people situate themselves in their body, two focuses which will be integral to her approach to teaching law and negotiation.
“We’re always in conflict,” she said. “Whether it’s on a societal level, organizational, interpersonal, or intrapersonal—happening within ourselves—we are always going to have conflict. How we’re going to create change and see the perspective of someone else without losing who we are—that’s what’s really fascinating about conflict negotiation.”
Kenmotsu initially came to Mitchell Hamline to earn her conflict resolution certificate, and along the way figured she might as well get her J.D.
“When I first started law school, I realized culturally, as an Asian American woman, my approach to law had a very circular flow to it,” she said. “It was challenging because I thought I was approaching law wrong, but I learned there are many individuals in law school who think like me. I want to create pedagogy that honors different ways of thinking and being.”
For Kenmotsu, this means bringing skills from her arts background into the law classroom, from the problem-solving component of creative thinking to her training in Laban Movement Analysis (LMA). A framework to analyze body language, LMA uses cues to assess and contextualize a situation. “We do it so instinctively in the arts,” she said, “but it feels missing in the legal field. What does it feel like to be embodied when you’re with a client or in the courtroom?
“I’m especially interested in how the body is situated in conflict negotiation resolution—how conflict lands on the body and how we wear it as trauma, as personality, as behavior.”
Kenmotsu said she is excited to be surrounded by the diverse array of students emblematic of Mitchell Hamline. “What I love about this community is that in every student I encounter, there is such a wealth of life experience. There’s something about that diversity of student population that I’m mindful of and that I find so incredible.”
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