Michelle Ha

I started my PhD intending to follow the story of how a group of Koreans were trafficked into indentured servitude on Mexican agave fiber (“henequén”) plantations at the turn of the twentieth century. I am now broadly interested in the following areas:

• Asian/American Studies (focus on Asia-Latin America, “coolie” labor in transpacific perspective, Japanese empire, and colonial Korea)
• Critical Legal Studies (focus on international migration law)
• Media Theory (focus on environmental media and cultural techniques)
• Environmental Humanities (focus on plants and agriculture)
• Philosophy of Technology (focus on agency and classification)
• History of Science & Material Culture (focus on traditional/Indigenous knowledge, fibers and fibrecraft)
• Art/Aesthetics (focus on contemporary visual media, functional objects and fiber art, creative nonfiction, and the “everyday”) 

My research is informed by my training in international migration law and immigration pro bono practice. I reflect on some of my experience in a co-authored contribution to this edited volume on global pro bono. I am motivated by questions concerning the politics of knowledge production, translation, and global justice, which are themes I explore in this article on “henequén.” 

My research has been supported by the Fulbright Commission in Mexico (COMEXUS), the Korea Foundation, the Tinker Foundation, and Foreign Language & Area Studies (FLAS) fellowship funding, among others.

On campus, I serve as the graduate co-chair of the Stanford Humanities Center (SHC) research workshop “Fiber Optics,” an interdisciplinary community exploring plants, fibers, and their social lives through multimodal research.