What is your academic background and your primary research interests?
- I have a PhD in History from Chicago and an MA in History from Penn State. In both cases, I worked primarily in modern Chinese history. My original research was on imperial China’s relations with the British empire, with a focus on the first British embassy to China in 1793. This interest turned into my first book, Cherishing Men from Afar, which combined English and Chinese sources to argue that the Anglo-Chinese conflict of the nineteenth-century was a clash of two expansive empires, not one between cultures. My second book, English Lessons, explored this theme in greater detail, linking British aggression in nineteenth-century China to similar patterns of behavior in colonial India. More recently, I have continued to work on the British empire in Asia, with an increased emphasis on military, environmental and agricultural development issues.
What was your inspiration to change the International Studies program? How did the program begin?
- When I arrived in 2004, following a six-year stint as the director of the International Studies Program at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), I found a curriculum with a heavy emphasis on International Relations, a subfield of Political Science. I began to introduce changes that shifted the focus away from great powers and nation-states as primary international actors toward global issues and the many kinds of transnational organization that operated in and outside of states to deal with environmental, health, cultural, and economic issues. The new program incorporated more course material from the humanities than in the past. At the same time, the revised program maintained many of strengths of the existing program – distribution of course requirements in tracks (now reorganized as International Political Economy, Transnational Processes, and Area Studies), an introductory two-quarter required sequence, a study abroad requirement, and most importantly, a required BA thesis.
How has the program changed over time?
- The biggest changes have involved the gradual evolution of the structure of the curriculum. Changes were driven in large part by my and Prof. Larisa Jasarevic’s engagement with the emerging field of environmental humanities and with feminist theory. Both of these fields of scholarship influenced the restructuring of the major about five years ago. In addition, we’ve shifted significantly in the past couple years towards environmental issues—what we’re going to do with 7 billion human beings on a planet that’s deteriorating environmentally. It’s an issue that’s hard to think of without a global viewpoint—it’s affecting everyone, everywhere. It’s right on top for our priorities going into the future.
How have students in the International Studies / Global Studies program impacted your research or how you see the world?
- The curriculum changes over the last several years were influenced in large part by student concerns with questions of gender and ethnic inequalities, human rights issues, economic disparities, and global climate change. As we began to broaden our own reading and introduced new kinds of literature into the curriculum, I found my own research interests changing. I have not left the field of colonial studies, but rather shifted the objects of investigation. Most recently, in Animal Labor & Colonial Warfare, I located the question of human-animal relations, a thematic emerging from feminist theory and the environmental humanities, in the use of animals in warfare right into the twentieth century, and especially in British military campaigns in Africa and Asia. The book I am working on now explores another kind of relation – that between humans and those animals and plants who are deemed to be pests (weeds and insects) and our efforts to control them, especially through pesticides and herbicides. I trace a history through British agricultural development in colonial India.
As you see them, what are the foundational tenets of the Global Studies program?
- Put simply, global, as opposed to national, issues. Humans share the same environments with other forms of life and deal with a common set of issues, environmental degradation, for example. If the coronavirus pandemic teaches us anything, it’s that human-made borders are completely ignored by numerous man-made and natural processes.
Do you have any words of advice for first and second-year students interested in Global Studies but still not sure what they want to major in?
- The major has always been open to double-majoring, and the way that things work at the University of Chicago, it’s pretty easy to move classes around for credit. You can major in one thing your first year, change your mind halfway through the second year, decide that it’s not working for you, and do something else your third year. The Global Studies program has a lot of flexibility built into it, and it’s relatively easy to incorporate a second major in the Social Sciences or the Humanities if you wish. The trick is to leave yourself open for new opportunities and interests over time and I think the Global Studies major gives you a lot of leeway to do that. It also allows you to pretty much design what you want to do, what you want to focus on. And more importantly, I think, it also requires you to complete a B.A. thesis, which fewer and fewer majors still require.
Why do you think that flexibility has become so distinctive and central to the identity of the Global Studies major?
- As a department, over time, we have drawn more and more students from other majors in the Humanities. When I first arrived at the University, the [International Studies] program was very much rooted in the Social Sciences, and I think that has certainly changed over time. Even before I started working here, it was home to a set of students who were more interested in interdisciplinary studies as opposed to the International Relations track within the Political Science department. There are probably a lot of reasons for this, including those that I have mentioned, but I also think that we’ve been able to create a welcoming atmosphere by incorporating interdisciplinary elements. In International Relations, only Nation-States seem to matter, and for some only the relations of great powers count. By looking at international relations through an interdisciplinary lens, I think that Global Studies provides students with different perspectives and the freedom to explore issues that they deem, through research, have global significance.
What interests/traits do all Global Studies students share?
- The biggest thing that has always impressed me about global studies majors is their concern for preparing themselves for a career in some kind of public service. Most are quite idealistic, which is refreshing considering the times we live in.
As Professor Hoang takes over as director of the department, what words of advice do you have as she takes on this new role?
- Having been through the experience myself, I think that there will be a period of time where Professor Hoang will be feeling it out, sorting it out, and trying new things—which has been a hallmark of the program since its inception. The program was never stagnant, we were constantly building new courses, incorporating new literature—even rethinking the basic structure. The core structure of the program has changed significantly over the years. I would encourage her to think about change, about keeping up with the world, because it’s definitely not stopping for us. I think she can be experimental with the program, and she’s indicating that already with efforts to integrate some study abroad opportunities with the University’s international centers and expanding cooperation with other programs at the university that have similar administrative structures. I think these are all looking promising already and will be good for the students in the major.
What do you think exemplifies a recipient of the new James Hevia Prize for B.A. Theses on the themes of Chinese, British and Asian studies, and human interactions with animals and plants?
- We’ve always had the Stevenson, but we’ve also split the prize pretty regularly. The thing about the thesis is that we usually get really good ones—really good B.A. theses with fantastic research questions. It’s always been really hard to choose the prize recipients because there are many in any given year that are of significant quality and I am fully in support of expanding prizes for students in the Global Studies program. I am also excited about the orientation of this prize towards my areas of research.
What are you looking forward to as you transition into retirement?
- Two things primarily – growing stuff and writing stuff. In the latter case, I have more research and writing to do, including on the project I’m calling Imperial Pests. In the former case, living in Chicago made it hard for me to garden. The community we’ve moved into provides gardening plots and plenty of room around our cottage to grow things. We’ve already started planting.