Speaker: Joseph Seeley, Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Virginia
Chair: Victor Seow, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences, Harvard University

Border of Water and Ice explores the significance of the Yalu River as a strategic border between Korea and Manchuria (Northeast China) during a period of Japanese imperial expansion into the region. The Yalu’s seasonal patterns of freezing, thawing, and flooding shaped colonial efforts to control who and what could cross the border. The unpredictable movements of water, ice, timber-cutters, anti-Japanese guerrillas, smugglers, and other borderland actors spilled outside the bounds set by Japanese colonizers, even as imperial border-making reinforced Japan’s wider political and economic power. Drawing on archival sources in Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and English, Border of Water and Ice tells the story of the river and the imperial Japanese border haphazardly imposed on its surface from 1905 to 1945 to show how rivers and other nonhuman actors play an active role in border creation and maintenance. Emphasizing the tenuous, environmentally contingent nature of imperial border governance, Border of Water and Ice argues for the importance of understanding history across the different seasons.

Joseph Seeley is an Assistant Professor in the University of Virginia’s Corcoran Department of History and specialist in the histories of Korea, the Japanese Empire, and East Asian environments and borderlands. His book Border of Water and Ice (Cornell University Press) examines the Yalu River boundary between northern Korea and China during a period of Japanese expansion in the region. Drawing on previously unexamined sources in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese, he argues that the seasonally freezing, thawing, and flooding river was a critical actor in imperial border creation and contestation. As part of his multilingual research on Korean history, Seeley has also published on topics such as animal disease control in colonial Korea, US-Korean diplomatic history, Korean tiger-human relations, and the history of Japanese colonial zoos in Seoul and Taipei. Prior to joining the History faculty at UVA Seeley completed his doctoral studies at Stanford University, where his research was supported by the Korea Foundation and the Freeman Spogli Institute. Before Stanford he earned a bachelor’s degree in History with a minor in Korean from Brigham Young University.

To attend this event online, please register here.

Korea Colloquium
Co-sponsored by Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and Program on U.S.-Japan Relations

Generously supported by the Young-Chul Min Memorial Fund at the Korea Institute, Harvard University