Victor Zatsepine

Victor ZatsepineAssistant Professor of History and Asian and Asian American Studies

Wood Hall – Room 307
Phone: (860) 486 – 0648
Email: victor.zatsepine@uconn.edu

Please join us in Congratulating Prof. Zatsepine on the recent publication of Beyond the Amur: Frontier Encounters between China and Russia, 1850-1930 (UBC Press, 2017)!

A joint appointment Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Asian and Asian American Studies, Victor Zatsepine has established himself as a highly valuable member of the Institute. His research significantly coheres with the Institute’s strengths in comparative ethnic studies.  A generous colleague and a dedicated teacher, Dr. Zatsepine’s work in the classroom has helped increase the number of students who pursue the Asian American Studies Minor.

Focused on frontier politics, exchanges, and conflicts along the Sino-Chinese border, Professor Zatsepine has just published his monograph Beyond the Amur: Frontier Encounters between China and Russia, 1850-1930 with University of British Columbia Press, 2017. In addition to the monograph, Professor Zatsepine has published one book chapter (“Surveying Manchuria: Imperial Russia’s Topographers at Work” in Entangled Histories: The Transcultural Past of Northeast China). He also has one peer-reviewed article (in The Journal of Northeast Asian History) and currently serves on the board of that journal. He has presented his work at major international conferences and has participated in a workshop held at Harvard University. These research endeavors underscore Professor Zatsepine’s deepened engagement with the field of Asian studies; perhaps even more significant, they highlight his emerging prominence as a recognized scholar in comparative Asian studies. Professor Zatsepine’s innovative scholarship challenges previous nationalist and regionalist paradigms by insisting that one take seriously the movement of bodies, ideas, and capital across borders.  This transnational, trans-regional focus – which intersects with the type of work done in critical Asian and Asian American Studies – engenders a new way of seeing borders and borderlands.

“New ways of seeing” are likewise apparent in his teaching and service.  As noted earlier is the increase in the number of students interested in our minor, and many of these students had the good fortune to take Professor Zatsepine’s “East Asian Since the Mid-Nineteenth Century” course.  What remains consistent is the extent to which students appreciate Dr. Zatsepine’s enthusiasm for the material and his willingness to engage students using multiple perspectives and approaches. While firmly grounded in History, Professor Zatsepine is mindful that his course draws students from other academic backgrounds; he therefore adapts his course to fulfill the expectations of his departmental home while furthering the aims of the Institute.

PUBLICATIONS

Book:

  • Beyond the Black Dragon River: Frontier Encounters Between China and Russia (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2017).

Edited Volume:

  • Laura Victoir and Victor Zatsepine eds., Harbin to Hanoi: Colonial Built Environment in East Asia, 1840-1940 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, March 2013).

Book Chapters:

  • “Surveying Manchuria: Imperial Russia’s Topographers at Work,” in Dan Ben-Canaan, Frank Grüner and Ines Prodöhl, eds., Entangled Histories: The Transcultural Past of Northeast China (Heidelberg, New York, London: Springer, 2014), pp. 177-188.
  • “The Blagoveshchensk Massacre of 1900: The Sino-Russian War and Global Imperialism,” in James Flath and Norman Smith, eds., Beyond Suffering: Recounting War in Modern China (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2011), pp. 107-129.
  • “Three Nations in Search of Manchuria’s Past,” in Geritt Gong and Victor Teo, eds., Reconceptualising the Divide: Identity, Memory and Nationalism in Sino-Japanese Relations (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010), pp. 119-134.
  • “Russian Explorers, Religious Exiles, and White Russians in Xinjiang,” in Peng De and Du Fachun, eds., Western Development and Socio-Economic Change: China-Canada Comparative Studies (Beijing: Intellectual Property Rights Publishing House, 2010), pp. 257-265.
  • “Amur: As River, as Border,” in Diana Lary, ed., The Chinese State at the Borders (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2007), pp. 151-161.

Edited Academic Journal Issue:

  • Loretta Kim, Matthew W. Mosca and Victor Zatsepine, eds., “Interfaces in Qing Frontier History,” in Frontiers of History in China, Vol. 9, No. 3 (2014). Introduction, pp. 329-335.

Articles in Academic Journals:

  • “An Uneasy Balancing Act: The Russian Émigré Community and Utopian Ideals of Manzhouguo,” in The Journal of Northeast Asian History, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Summer 2013), pp. 131-153.
  • “俄国对黑龙江边疆的殖民化,”北大史学,北京大学历史学系编,2008年13期[Russian Colonization of the Heilongjiang/Amur Frontier, Peking University Historiography, History Department, Peking University, 2008, 13], pp. 215-233.
  • “华人对俄罗斯远东城市发展的贡献,” 西伯利亚研究,黑龙江省社会科学院,哈尔滨将于2007年,第4期, 59-63 [“The Historical Contribution of Chinese Migrants to Urban Development in the Russian Far East,” Siberian Studies, Heilongjiang Academy of Social Sciences, Harbin,2007,4, pp. 59-63]

Courses Taught at UConn

AASI 3998/History 3810 / China and the West

AASI/History 3808-001 / East Asia to Mid-Nineteenth Century

AASI/History 3809-001 / East Asia since Mid-Nineteenth Century

History 3095 / Foreign relations of China