Peter Chen

Field: Chinese Literature
Advisor: Lydia Liu
Email: pc2936@columbia.edu

Xuexin Cai

Field: Chinese and Environmental History
Advisor: Eugenia Lean
Year of Enrollment: 2020
Email: xc2546@columbia.edu

Xuexin Cai is a PhD candidate in the History-East Asia Program. He works at the intersection of environmental humanities, borderlands studies, and the history of science and technology. While his current research focuses on Yunnan, in Southwest China, he is also interested in the broader Sino-Southeast Asian and Sino-Tibetan borderlands.

His dissertation, titled “Between Wasteland and Wilderness: Rubber, Nature, and the Making of Tropical China, 1945-2000,” explores the socio-environmental history of Xishuangbanna (Sipsongpanna), which sits at the intersection of China, Laos, and Burma, and is one of the world’s most biologically and culturally diverse regions. With an interdisciplinary approach informed by archival research, ethnographic fieldwork, and critical use of scientific studies and digital geospatial mapping, his dissertation traces two intertwined historical processes in the half century following the end of WWII: the biophysical, socioeconomic, and discursive transformation of southern Yunnan (particularly Xishuangbanna) from a remote borderland into the center of China’s tropical sciences and agriculture, and China’s transformation into a state with serious commitment to environmentally sustainable development. Focusing on China’s coterminous establishment of rubber farms and nature reserves, this project explores questions that are key to understanding the environmental changes and the lived experience of millions of people in southern Yunnan and beyond, from the Maoist to the Reform periods.

Experiences before coming to Columbia have shaped Xuexin’s current research interests. During his undergraduate years at New York University Abu Dhabi, he studied the history of tea trade between communities in Southwest China and those on the Tibetan Plateau. Upon graduation, he went to Yunnan and spent three years there, working first in the public humanities and then at a village primary school not far from the China-Burma border. The people and places that he became familiar with during those years continue to be an important source of inspiration for his current research.

Jason Butters

Field: Modern Japanese History
Advisor: Paul Kreitman, Susan Pedersen
Email: jgb2157@columbia.edu

Jason Butters is a History-East Asia Ph.D. candidate researching transregional intellectual and
cultural exchange through imperial Japan. Broadly defined, his interests include cultural
exchange and cultural relations across the twentieth-century world; the international history of
states’ uses of culture for power; the relationship between liberal internationalism, cultural
nationalism, and state power; and imperial Japan and Tokyo as centres of global flows of
peoples, ideas, and things. Jason’s dissertation traces the use of culture and cultural relations for
state power and imperialism in early-twentieth-century Japan and beyond, illuminating the
interconnectedness of internationalism, cultural nationalism, and state power. These subjects
reflect his interest in social, cultural, and intellectual historical methods, diverse sources, and
theories of power and culture.
Before arriving at Columbia, Jason completed a BA and MA (history) at Concordia University
(Montréal, ’14 and ‘16) and an MA from Kobe University’s Graduate School of Law (‘20). He
was born outside of Vancouver, British Columbia.

ジェイソン バターズ（BUTTERS, Jason）は近現代歴史学の博士号取得候補生である。主
な関心は国家権力と自由主義国際主義、および文化的ナショナリズムの関連性である。
それに加え、19・20世紀の世界中での日本や帝国諸国、支配下の領土と人々を繋いだ文
化交流と移動にも興味がある。博士論文では、20世紀初頭の日本における国家権力と帝
国主義のための国際的文化交流と対外文化紹介・宣伝の活用に着目し、国際主義それか
ら文化的ナショナリズムと国家権力の相互関連性を明らかにする。
バターズはコンコルディア大学で学士号と修士号（歴史学）、神戸大学大学院法学研究
科で修士号（政治学）を取得したブリティッシュコロンビア州バンクーバー郊外の出身
者である。