Doctoral Candidate Chris Choe is a doctoral candidate who studies American political development and US empire. He is interested in applying business-historical methods to questions of political and diplomatic history, focusing on institutional change to administrative apparatuses as a modification of Alfred Chandler's thesis in Strategy and Structure. He earned his BA in History at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he worked with Professor Mary Yeager to produce his honors thesis, "Growing Pains: The Innovative Synthesis of Corporate Rivalries," a comparative business history of the rivalry between the Ford Motor Company and the General Motors Corporation in the 1920s-1930s and the rivalry between the United Parcel Service and the US Postal Service in the 1970s-1990s. This research rejects Chandler's explanation for Ford Motor Company's declining market share after 1927 and challenges Schumpeterian creative destruction. He earned his MA in History at the University of Georgia, under the supervision of Professor Stephen Mihm. His thesis, "Under New Management: U.S. Administration of the Panama Canal Zone, 1904-14," analyzes the changes to the institutional structure of the governing regime on the Canal Zone. By comparing American construction to the French period in the 1870s--and to the longer history of infrastructural development in the nineteenth-century United States--this research underscores the peculiarity of this experiment in state control and the ways the Panama Canal symbolized developments in the public/private distinction, the administrative state, and imperialism at the turn of the twentieth century. His doctoral research is an extension of his MA research. Chris's dissertation project explores the organizational, administrative, and policy history of the Canal Zone in the period of unilateral US operation, roughly 1914 to 1978. To tackle these questions, Chris conjoins ideas and analytical methods from political science, sociology, and radical geography. Chris also has research interest in the history of psychology and is currently working on a study of the nosological development of functional neurologic disorder. When he is not thinking about organizations or power, Chris runs the Department's history and film series. In concert, Chris also has the hubristic ambition of watching every film ever made... ever. Research Research Areas: Capitalism and Economics U.S. 19th & 20th Century Political & Legal Cultural & Intellectual Imperialism & Colonialism Latin America & Caribbean Labor History World History Research Interests: Broadly, my interests lie in the economic and business history of the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Specifically, I am interested in questions about transportation, infrastructure, and logistics; the administrative state and the public/private distinction; imperialism; and rivalries, competition, and innovation. I use the Panama Canal as my primary lens into these questions. Grants: Gregory Travel Grant, 2022 University of Florida Library Travel Grant, 2022 Hagley Exploratory Research Grant, 2021 Gregory Travel Grant, 2021 Gregory Travel Grant, 2019 Wellman Travel Grant, 2018 Dissertation/Thesis Title: Under New Management: U.S. Administration of the Panama Canal Zone, 1904-14 Degree Completion Date: Mon, 08/09/2021 - 12:00pm Education Education: M.A., University of Georgia, History 2021 B.A., University of California, Los Angeles, History 2019 Other Information Of note: History Department Award, 2023 Jane Mulkey and Rufus King Green Fellowship, 2022 Graduate Research Award, Willson Center for Humanities & Arts, 2022 LeConte Prize, 2021 Phi Beta Kappa, 2019
