Border of Water and Ice: The Yalu River and Japan’s Empire in Korea and Manchuria

For non-Columbia affiliates, registration is required to access the Morningside campus. Registering will generate an email with a QR code which must be presented along with a government-issued ID (your name must match exactly the name registered for the event) at either 116 Street & Broadway or 116 Street & Amsterdam gates for entry. Please register using an unique email address (one email address per registrant) by Apr 2 at 4:00 pm for campus access.

Speaker: Joseph Seeley, Assistant Professor, Corcoran Department of History, University of Virginia

Moderator: Paul Kreitman, Associate Professor of 20th Century Japanese History, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia 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. Joseph Seeley shows how 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.

Speaker’s Bio: Joseph Seeley is an Assistant Professor in the University of Virginia’s Corcoran Department of History, and a specialist in the history of Korea, the Japanese Empire, and East Asian environmental history. His book Border of Water and Ice examines the Yalu River boundary between northern Korea and China during a period of Japanese expansion in the region. 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 and earned a bachelor’s degree in History with a minor in Korean from Brigham Young University.

This event is hosted by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute.

Registration:

• To attend this event in-person, please register HERE.
• To attend this event online, please register HERE.