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Doctoral Candidate in History

• Fields of Study

  • 20th C United States, modern China
  • cultural history, global and transnational history, history of photography, visual culture, modern Christianity, missions

• About

  I am interested in 20th century United States history and East Asian history, with particular emphases on cultural history, global history, and visual culture (the history and technologies of photography). I am currently investigating American Protestant and Catholic missionary enterprises in China between 1890 and 1950, viewing vernacular photographs and films in conversation with private documents, institutional records, and oral histories. The goal of my research is to investigate the role of photographic visuality in Christian missions and modernizing projects, as well as the place of image-making in the experiences of missionaries "on the ground." A significant part of this work also focuses on the circulation of images across time and space, visual materials contextualized by transnational cultural and religious meaning-making.

• Education

  • BA, History, University of California San Diego, 2009
  • MA, History, University of Michigan

• Presentations

  • Ho, Joseph. (2011). "In Our Image," Visual Perception and American Protestant Missions in Interwar China. UCLA Historical Journal, 23 (1), 43-61
  • “‘A World Unto Itself:’ Family Photograph Albums and Visual Approaches to Transnational Studies.” Digital Humanities and Atlantic Studies Conference (UM, April 2012)
  • "Seeing and Believing: Missionaries, Photographs, and Visual Perceptions of 20th Century China,” 15th Annual Harvard East Asia Society Graduate Conference (Harvard, February 2012)