Seokju Oh

Seokju Oh

I am a PhD Candidate in the History Department at Columbia University, specializing in the political economy and foreign relations of the United States in the long twentieth century.

My dissertation examines US ascendancy during the era of the world wars (1917-1946) through the lens of sectionalism. Drawing primarily on archival materials from sixteen US states and DC, it demonstrates that the nation's food- and raw material-producing South and West—fearful that global ambitions would divert limited resources away from domestic priorities and equipped with de facto veto power in Congress—posed a formidable domestic constraint on the project of US global supremacy. It traces how the project's advocates initially sought to circumvent these sectional challenges through ad-hoc measures, and later attempted to resolve them through policy "fixes" aimed at incorporating broader regional interests. In doing so, they fundamentally reshaped both the political institutions and economic geography of the United States.

A key objective of my research is to challenge dominant accounts of American political development and US conduct in global politics by foregrounding a basic yet often overlooked reality: the United States is a transcontinental federation marked by regional variation.

In AY 2026-27, I will be in residence at the Harvard Kennedy School as an Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy.