Alumni Interview with Professor Joseph Seeley (Stanford History Ph.D. 2019)
Joseph Seeley (Stanford History Ph.D. 2019) is Associate Professor of History at the University of Virginia. A specialist in the histories of Korea, the Japanese Empire, and East Asian environments and borderlands, Seeley is the author of Border of Water and Ice: The Yalu River and Japan's Empire in Korea and Manchuria (Cornell University Press, 2024) and many articles exploring cattle disease control in colonial Korea, Japanese colonial zoos in Seoul and Taipei, Korean tiger-human relations, and US-Korea relations. He is currently working on two projects: a book manuscript on the environmental history of North Korea, and a co-authored monograph about the history of hunting in the Japanese Empire.
How did you become interested in environmental history in modern East Asia?
My journey to East Asian history began as a nineteen-year old, when I was assigned to South Korea for two years as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons). Having also studied Japanese and Chinese as an undergrad at Brigham Young University and lived in Japan and China, I started my PhD at Stanford wanting to pursue a transnational approach to the shared histories of Korea, Japan, and China. A focus on borderlands was very instrumental to this end. As for the environmental angle, that also comes from formative experiences in my youth. When I first started going to college in southern Utah, I had the chance to work summers in Zion National Park, one of the most beautiful places on earth. My job required that I spend a lot of time learning about the park’s history and ecology, and those environmental interests stayed with me afterwards.
Your first book Border of Water and Ice (Cornell University Press, 2024) is based on your 2019 dissertation, Liquid Geography, at Stanford. Tell us what the book is about.
My book examines the Yalu River border between Korea and China during the early twentieth century, when it became part of the longest formal, non-maritime border of the Japanese Empire. Focusing on the river itself as a historical actor, I discuss how its seasonal patterns of thawing, flooding, and freezing collided with Japanese attempts to violently control who and what could cross this strategic border. Historians are very comfortable thinking about the past in terms of years, decades, or centuries, but seasons figure all too infrequently in our climate-controlled narratives. In the case of the Yalu River, a distinct seasonal cycle of water and ice shaped the actions of different border crossers (such as smugglers, anti-Japanese guerrillas, timber-cutters, fishermen) and the imperial border agents who tried to police them.
Could you share a bit more about your ongoing book projects.
I am working on a book project that focuses on North Korean interactions over time with the non-human environment, including rivers, mountains, forests, and animals. North Korea is often considered a bit of a black box for outside observers, and for good reason. The North Korean state carefully curates all kinds of media- such as newspapers, books, reports- published within its borders, and doing effective archival research there is not feasible. What I am finding is that while there are a lot of challenges involved in piecing together this puzzle, many useful insights can be gleaned from critically reading so-called “propaganda” from the state and triangulating it, whenever possible, with outside sources such as South Korean and U.S. intelligence reports and defector testimony.
In addition , my interest from my first book in Japanese environmental history continues in the form of another book project with my co-authors Aaron Skabelund and Lisa Yoshikawa. We are currently writing a history of hunting in the Japanese Empire, exploring how hunting was not only conducted by White European hunters in khaki and pith helmets, but also by the Japanese themselves who used animal capture as a means of asserting dominance over colonized spaces.
Is there a particular archival moment that you can share with us?
At the Sonoma State University Special Collections, I discovered the diaries of Roy Maxwell Talbot, an American employee of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service. Talbot was stationed in Andong (modern-day Dandong), on the Chinese bank of the Yalu, when the Japanese took over Manchuria (Northeast China) in 1931. In one entry, he expressed his excitement upon being promoted to customs director of Andong by writing a smiley face :) . Talbot’s excitement obviously dimmed later when the Japanese forced him out of his post, but the smiley face was a relatable moment, and I persuaded the copy-editors to let me keep a smiley face emoji with the quote in the final book (see page 103).
How would you advise Stanford undergraduates who are still debating a degree in History?
Majoring in History provides you skills of communication, critical analysis, and empathy applicable in a wide variety of fields, and you get to learn a lot of cool stories about the human past in the meantime! AI can write basic code, but can it synthesize new (and not just regurgitated or inaccurate) insights from the past and adapt them to the challenges of the present? Plus, at Stanford, majoring in History provides you access to the dozens of History faculty who are among the brightest historical minds in the world. That mentorship, along with all the other opportunities at Stanford, can help you learn valuable lessons to prepare for life post-graduation.
How would you advise current graduate students training in East Asian History?
I think all grad students should try to publish at least one academic article before they graduate. Sure, academic hiring committees usually find this attractive, so there are mercantile reasons for pursuing that coveted “publications” line on your CV. Going through the article publication process is also rewarding in many other ways. It gives you an early introduction to the peer review process, which can be an imperfect instrument but is still one of the best ways to get feedback on your work besides another pleading email to your advisor. Learning how to take such feedback is an important part of professionalization, as is learning to avoid perfectionism and be humble. It also introduces your work to other scholars in the field who will benefit from your insights. Nothing quite so rewarding, in our nerdy field, as meeting a scholar at a conference and having them say, “Oh, I’ve read your work!”
What texts inspired you the most in your career?
One work that comes to mind is Stanford historian Professor Richard White’s The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River. It is a relatively short but rhetorically eloquent and powerful work of environmental history. I was also inspired by the late Aaron Stephen Moore’s Journal of Asian Studies article on the Japanese construction of the Sup’ung Dam on the Yalu River. Upon first reading Moore’s article, I wondered if I needed to change dissertation topics because someone had already done such a great job. Thankfully there was far more to the story of the colonial Yalu than Moore relates, and his article is a text I came back to time and time again. I was even more thrilled when I met Aaron in person and he generously shared all sorts of primary sources with me.
What are some key things you remember from your time at Stanford?
I loved my five years at Stanford. Honestly I was just thrilled to be able to benefit intellectually from such wonderful faculty mentors and grad student colleagues while also enjoying a high quality of life amidst the California sunshine and suburban serenity of campus. Some more specific fun memories include taking my baby daughter (now eight years old!) to Stanford History events, perusing dusty East Asian publications amidst the quiet metal shelves of the Stanford Auxiliary Library, spontaneous conversations with fellow grad students in the ‘Ounge or the Harold Kahn Reading Room, and sunset walks on the Dish trail or between the lovely sandstone archways of the Quad with my lovely wife, Mengxi Seeley, a graduate of Stanford’s East Asian Studies MA program.