Seokju Oh

Seokju Oh

I am a PhD Candidate in US History at Columbia University, specializing in the history of the state, capitalism, and the countryside in the era of the world wars.

My dissertation examines the transformation of the US national state and its global ascendancy during the era of the world wars through the lens of sectionalism. Drawing primarily on archival materials from sixteen 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 sectional 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 continental federation marked by regional variation.

I am currently in residence at the Harvard Kennedy School as an Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy.