2026-06-26 –, Room 106 (Seats 105)
This panel examines a central paradox of modern world history: encounters, circulation, and mobility often produced not openness, but new boundaries of culture, politics, and economy. Spanning modern China, colonial India, the Burma–China borderlands, and late nineteenth-century Europe, the panel explores how ideas, religious practices, peoples, and commodities moved across regions while being translated, contested, and regulated in local settings. The papers show how foreign constitutional models in China were reinterpreted rather than simply adopted; how missionary networks in Mysore intensified cultural division even as they expanded contact; how American Protestant expansion reshaped minority identities across imperial borderlands; and how the circulation of American kerosene generated trade barriers through the language of risk and safety. Taken together, these presentations highlight how modern connectivity became a means of producing new forms of exclusion, differentiation, and boundary-making.
The Paradox of Connectivity: Missionary Encounters and the Hardening of Cultural Borders in Mysore, 1820–1858
Title for Additional Participant 2:Comparative Constitutional Horizons in Modern Chinese Constitution-Making
Title for Additional Participant 3:Empires’ Minorities: Building an American Christian Empire in the British-Ruled Burma
Title for Additional Participant 4:American Danger: Kerosene’s Risks and Trade Barriers in Late 19th-Century Europe
Ilnyun Kim received his PhD in history from The Ohio State University and is currently Assistant Professor of History at Ewha Womans University. He specializes in political, intellectual, and diplomatic history, with particular emphasis on Cold War-era exchanges among the United States, Western Europe, and East Asia. More recently, he has expanded his research into the history of medicine. His work has appeared in Diplomatic History, Modern Intellectual History, and the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences. He is currently completing his first monograph, which examines the connections between mid-twentieth-century American liberals and progressive forces around the world.
Donghyuk Kim completed his PhD in History at the University of Edinburgh in 2025, with a thesis titled 'British Missionary Encounters in the Princely State of Mysore, 1820–1910.' He currently teaches history at Seoul National University and Ewha Womans University. His research focuses on the history of the British Empire during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with a particular interest in the dynamic interplay between empire and religion in colonial South Asia.
Geonjoon Bae received his BA and MA in history from Sogang University and is currently pursuing a PhD in Chinese history at Beijing Normal University. His research interests include constitutional thought and constitution-making in modern China, third forces, ethnic minorities, and digital history. He is currently working on a doctoral dissertation on constitution-making in modern China. More recently, he has been exploring digital methods for the collection, structuring, analysis, and sharing of modern Chinese historical sources. He has published articles and coauthored volumes on modern Chinese constitutional thought, ethnic minorities, and digital history.
Sinae Hyun is a research professor in the Center for Korean Studies at Inha University, specializing in the Cold War, nationalism, and Southeast Asian studies. Her first book, Indigenizing the Cold War, was published by the University of Hawaii Press in April 2023. She has published several research articles on the Southeast Asian Cold War and ethnic minorities in the border areas in major academic journals, including Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Cold War History, and Asian Studies Review. She is currently preparing a book manuscript focusing on the histories of American Protestant missionaries in Southeast Asia and their dealings with overlapping empires of Britain, China, and "Others".
Minseok Jang is a historian of environment, business, and technology. He earned his Ph.D. from State University of New York, Albany, in 2026, with a focus on the global petroleum industry. His research examines the material risks of energy transitions and the social construction of technological standards. He has published in leading journals, including Business History Review and Technology and Culture. He is currently a lecturer at Korea University.