Alumni Interview with Professor Junko Takeda (Stanford History PhD, 2006)

Junko Takeda is Professor of History and Chair of the Citizenship and Civic Engagement Program in the Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs at Syracuse University. A historian of France and its engagement with Asian empires and populations, she focuses on themes of citizenship, globalization, revolutions, migration, displacement, and disease in early modern Europe. She is the author of two books, “Between Crown and Commerce: Marseille and the Early Modern Mediterranean” (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), and “The Other Persian Letters: Iran and a French Empire of Trade, 1700-1808” (Liverpool University Press, 2020). Her two monographs-in-progress explore migration, dispossession, and religious and ethnic violence in the early modern world. Beyond premodern global, connected and French histories, Professor Takeda is interested in Asian American history and Zainichi Korean history. She is working on her memoir, tentatively titled “Undocumented: A Japanese-Korean American Memoir,” which explores inter-ethnic tensions, statelessness, anti-Asian racism and discrimination, life as an undocumented immigrant, and the challenges of caregiving for an elderly immigrant parent in the contemporary United States.
How did you become interested in early modern European history?
I became interested in early modern European history as an undergraduate student at Duke University. During my sophomore year, I approached a professor about the possibility of writing a thesis in French history right after reading Natalie Zemon Davis’s The Return of Martin Guerre. I ended up working on Alexis de Tocqueville and his inconsistent views of race and empire. I was interested in how a self-proclaimed nineteenth-century classical liberal could understand racial tensions in the U.S. (as he discussed in his Democracy in America) but then return to France and advocate for the violent colonization of Algeria and the extermination of its Arab population. This topic spoke to me, because of a combination of academic training and personal experience. I had just been legalized four years prior, having grown up as an undocumented immigrant. I hadn’t had time to process my family’s multiple deportation hearings in Atlanta, for which I’d translated documents, and went to court as an eight- and ten-years-old girl with my family to defend us against the U.S. Department of Justice’s arguments for our removal. Asian American history wasn’t offered when I went to Duke. But I knew I wanted to understand how western populations perceived foreigners, immigrants, or those on the fringes of legality; how opportunities for belonging could lose footing to unjust laws, political shifts, or economic interests; how minoritized people navigated such turns. These questions have continued to generate my interest in the kinds of topics I’ve consistently returned to, on France’s engagement with Asian empires and populations, across the years.
How do issues of migration and displacement help understand early modern worlds?
The period that I study, the latter half of the seventeenth through the eighteenth century, was one rocked by religious and political violence, imperial expansion and contraction, and the growth of global capitalism. It was the front end of the era that we live in today, where we see the corrosive effects of global capitalism particularly on the most marginalized populations. For the last few research projects, I’ve been turning to global microhistories, where I use one life, or a collection of individual lives, as a way to show how people who operated in the liminal spaces of local communities, states, and empires navigated this disorienting world.
When I came back to Stanford in November 2024 to present my book-in-progress at Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (CMEMS), I shared the story of Maria Guimar de Pinha. She was a naturalized French, ethically Luso-Goan and Japanese woman in Siam, who survived her husband’s death during the revolution of Siam in 1688 by leaning into her various ethnic, national, and Catholic identities, at different points of her life. Spotlighting someone like her lets me foreground histories that we haven’t told about ethnic code-switching and self-fashioning in the early modern world. It helps us to understand that individuals like her weren’t just subjects of European gazes, but actors in a racialized world. And that kind of perspective–one that decenters or provincializes “Europe”--is an important and empowering one that allows European history to resonate more with our increasingly diverse students, and with people like myself.
Your research explores the global history of early modern empires and the interconnections between them. What are some opportunities of pursuing such an approach?
Exploring a character like Maria Guimar, whom I mentioned above, allows us to better understand what we mean by a globalized world, and here, we can draw lessons for the present from the past. We can use her, for example, as a lens to unpack concepts or themes like “mobility” or “interconnectivity.” What’s interesting about Maria is that across her 60-some years long life, she never moved. The farthest she traveled was between Ayutthaya and Bangkok, down the Chao Praya River in present-day Thailand. And that was the case with most people in the early modern world. But just because they were trapped in one place doesn’t mean that they didn’t experience a world in motion. Her father came from Goa. One set of grandparents were Catholic exiles from Japan. She lived in Japantown in Ayutthaya, across the river from the Portuguese settlement. She taught Siamese orphans at the French church up the river. She dispatched letters to Jesuits in China and the Asian subcontinent, while other letters of hers ended up in Europe. She sued the French Compagnie des Indes, evidenced in a collection of legal documents archived in France. And at the end of her life, she became an enslaved kitchen overseer for a Siamese king, and is remembered as the woman who introduced Portuguese egg-based custards and desserts into Thai cuisine. These recipes developed across centuries, blending European female monastic traditions, Arab candying practices from Al-Andalus, Judaic custard making knowledge, Indian sugar production. Maria allows us to see that histories of mobility and immobility are not as diametrically opposed as we might assume. And histories of French imperial expansion, when told from the other side of the world, can help us rethink what we mean about centers and peripheries.
What are some key challenges of writing global microhistories?
One is the scope of archival, documented, and material sources. When I was trained as an early modern French historian, I never imagined that twenty years later, I’d be chasing down documents and arranging site visits in Nagasaki, Hirado, Bangkok, or Ayutthaya. I speak Japanese, and have limited reading ability in 17th-century Japanese. I’ve learned to read Portuguese, but for other languages, I rely on collaborations to gain access to sources. I’m extremely privileged now to have the kinds of resources through my institution to do this kind of work, but I’m fully aware that these opportunities are not accessible to all. The other challenge, I would say, is that oftentimes, when you’re trying to recover the stories of someone who’s traditionally been silenced or erased in the archives due to their marginality in the world in which they lived, you’re working with fragmentary records.
You are working on a memoir titled Undocumented: A Japanese-Korean American Memoir. How does it feel to write a memoir as a historian?
I touched on this question in my recent Stanford talk organized by Asian American Research Center at Stanford. As a historian, I’ve been trained to avoid “I” in writing. And I’ve been comfortable with that for years. Despite the fact that my personal childhood experiences as an undocumented immigrant fueled the kinds of scholarly questions I landed on across my career, that relationship between the personal and professional remained behind the scenes. I grew up with Asian parents who linguistically struggled with English, who encouraged me to keep my head down, who spent their lives hiding their visa status, their bi-ethnic marriage, and dad’s Korean identity. Self-effacement was baked into me. So historical writing that avoided the first person has sat comfortably for me. Memoir writing is not like that. So it’s been a learning and unlearning process. It’s taken a long time to get to a point in my life where I can practice vulnerability as a writer, and talk openly, not only about personal and familial experiences, but about the long-term emotional impact of immigration trauma, displacement, and dislocation on members of my family. But that openness has also allowed me to better connect with students and public audiences. And develop my voice as an early modern French historian as well.
I think writing a family memoir is also a challenge because of the ways in which it forces me to think about my relationship with my ancestors. Stanford Professor Richard White wrote in his own history and memoir, Remembering Ahanagran: Storytelling in a Family’s Past, that while a memoir is a collaboration between the author and family who provide their memories, the historian also challenges and interrogates how they view and remember their pasts. I’ve found that as much as I want to amplify my father’s voice, and resurrect my late mother’s, I’m uncomfortable with the myths of immigrant success and model minorities that shaped some of the narratives of how they view/ed the trajectory of our lives here. I wouldn’t be able to write this memoir without them. But as much as I began this project to un-silence them and document their undocumented pasts, I’ve found that articulating my voice also comes at the cost of questioning theirs. I think writing a memoir is both an act of filial piety and sometimes the opposite of such piety.
Do you have a favorite archive or library?
I think nothing can top the first ones I started visiting as a graduate student in France in 2003. I absolutely love working at the Archives de la chambre de commerce in Marseille, France, housed in the beautiful Palais de la Bourse right by the city’s port. It’s never crowded, and across many years, I would go back and the same archivists would support all my research needs. It’s also nestled close to some wonderful cafes and restaurants. So whenever I go there, I work a few hours, then take a nice long lunch break under the Mediterranean sun, then return for the afternoon.
I’ve also enjoyed working at the French colonial archives, the Archives nationales d’outre mer (ANOM) in Aix-en-Provence. The archivists there have been extraordinarily helpful with all of my projects, from my initial dissertation research, to my current monograph project that’s required me to explore the Siam series stored there. I lived in a studio apartment right on the cours Mirabeau in Aix for three years as a Stanford History PhD student. So I’ll always have wonderful memories of my time there, and I return as often as possible.
What texts inspired you the most in your career?
I think I have a different set of answers for different moments across my career. In terms of what comes to mind now, there are some great microhistories that have really helped me think about how to tell stories, how to bring out the complexities of characters, and how they navigate options, challenges, and risks. One of my all time favorites, as I mentioned in the earlier question, is Natalie Zemon Davis’s The Return of Martin Guerre, as well as her Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth Century Muslim between Worlds. Her microhistories take marginalized historical characters and allow you to see the world through their eyes. Linda Colley’s The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History and Jonathan Spence’s The Question of Hu also do that so well. I also draw inspiration from things other than works by historians. For my projects on Maria and on Avétik, an Orthodox Armenian prisoner kidnapped, detained, and possibly murdered by the French Crown in the early eighteenth century, I found Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon incredibly helpful as a tool to think about unstable narratives and unreliable narrators.
In terms of my memoir writing, it’s incredibly inspiring to be surrounded by so many Asian American writers, many younger than myself, who are writing candidly about what it’s like living or growing up Asian in America. The ways in which they address memory, trauma, race, model minority myths, intergenerational conflict, and inter-ethnicity are truly impressive. I’m thinking of Cathy Park Hong, Thi Bui, Jose Antonio Vargas, Curtis Chin, Grace Cho, Stephanie Foo, and so many others. The ways in which they deal with intersectionality and inter-racial dynamics dialogue so well with works by bell hooks or Ruby Hamad.
What are some key things you remember from your time at Stanford History?
I owe an immense debt to my advisor, Keith Baker. He really shaped my intellectual journey from the first trimester of year one of grad school, when I took his team taught (with David Bien) Tocqueville and Beyond. As a first-gen college student, and as someone who was undocumented across my childhood, I have struggled with imposter syndrome for many years. But Keith took me under his wing, and offered several independent studies as he completed his term as cognizant dean. One of the things I really respect about him, something I try to emulate as a graduate advisor, is that he allowed his students to follow their interests, regardless of their alignment with his own work. If you look at the range of people he has advised, we work on such a range: gender history, intellectual history, the Mediterranean world, political culture, law, colonial, Francophone world, and more. Of course I incorporated the history of ideas that he modeled in his work into my dissertation, but he always encouraged me to follow my interests in global history.
Other professors who taught me in European history in my first three years at Stanford include Paul Robinson, Lou Roberts, and Jim Sheehan. Across the years that followed, I learned so much from scholars whose works I read, others for whom I TA’ed, or joined at seminars and colloquia, both within and outside my field, including Jessica Riskin, Paula Findlen, JP Daughton, Carolyn Lougee, Gordon Chang, Richard Roberts, Aron Rodrigue, and Priya Satia. The early 2000s was a great time to be at Stanford.
The cohorts of graduate students who entered around the time I did in 2000 were also an amazing group of individuals, all working in different fields, but supportive of one another across our experience at Stanford. I’m still friends with many of them. I don’t think I would have gotten through graduate school without them.
What advice do you have for undergraduate students who may be contemplating taking classes or majoring in History?
One of the things I have loved about serving as a chair of Citizenship & Civic Engagement program at the Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs and as a director of undergraduate studies in the History Department at Syracuse is the opportunity to get to know students on a more personal level. In this fast paced world, where now, I think there’s much more pressure to figure out things earlier and earlier, one of the things I actually try to do is to highlight the benefits of slowing down. Where I work, many students double and triple major, intern, study away, and work. I’m sure that’s fairly universal. All of this leaves little wiggle room for courses outside of credit requirements. So I stress the importance of taking time to savor a reading, or a course outside your field of interest. And who knows, that might lead you to a new focus in the major, or a senior capstone. Or just a new way of seeing things you may not have considered before.
That leads to a related question about the larger takeaways of a History major. I think it’s particularly important to highlight the connection between historical understanding and civic engagement. We’re better global and empathetic citizens if we can do a better job appreciating the complexities of the human past. But these larger takeaways don’t have to be diametrically opposed to career interests. One of our alumni on our advisory board who works in finance has stressed to me repeatedly how he’s always drawn to job applicants who majored in History, due to their ability to offer creative analysis, conduct research, write well-informed memos, and much more. He’s told me that history majors who’ve taken a diverse set of courses about different geographical areas, themes, and temporalities are great thinkers and conversationalists; their historical sensibilities add great value to the work environment, whether it be for engaging with clients, taking on international assignments, or assuming leadership positions. So I think there are a lot of ways that we can talk to students about the value of a history major that may not always be immediately obvious.
How would you advise graduate students who are now training in the history field?
I would stress the importance of learning outside of class as much as inside. Professional development opportunities abound at a place like Stanford. And for a first-gen student like me, it was really critical to take advantage of them. For someone who struggled with public speaking and with feeling comfortable in academic spaces, it was important that my advisors encouraged us not just to show up at the Early Modern and Modern European seminars, and what was then called the French Culture Workshop, but also to ask questions, to engage in scholarly dialogue, to develop a pitch for your own work, and to network with scholars. The enticement of free, delicious food was also a real draw!
Another related point I mention a lot to my own students is the value of site visits beyond the archive. The soft benefits of walking through a seventeenth-century crypto-Christian tended rice paddy in Hirado, Japan, or of helping a French shepherd take his 400 sheep out to graze in the marshes across from Mont Saint Michel may not be apparent at first, but they add to our understanding of our historical protagonists’ lives and worlds, and enrich our writing in ways that can’t be measured.
I think as a mentor and advisor myself, the other thing I am very open with my students about is the topic of what one can do with a PhD in history beyond tenure track positions, and how to diversify your skill set and knowledge base with digital expertise, language acquisition, and interdisciplinary breath. One of the beautiful things about history is its adjacency and adaptability with so many other fields: geography, cartography, law, art history, literature, languages, you name it. It’s why I’m so excited about the new scholarship being developed by current graduate students and early career professors. I was amazed coming back to Stanford and hearing all about the new work and dissertation projects being developed by current PhD students. They’re certainly ahead of where I was back then. And that makes me super happy and proud to be a Stanford alum!