Joseph W. Ho

Dr. Joseph W. HoW. Ho is a cultural historian with interests in China-US encounters, modern Chinese history, and global visual culture. His current research focuses on photographs and movies made by American Protestant and Catholic missionaries in China during the country’s dramatic transformations between 1900-1950. He is presently completing a book with Cornell University Press, entitled Developing Mission: Photography, Filmmaking, and American Missionaries in Modern China.

Dr. Ho earned his B.A. in History (Honors with Highest Distinction) from the University of California, San Diego, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in History from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Prior to starting at Albion in 2017, he was a Henry Luce Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of San Francisco’s Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History. Currently, Dr. Ho is a Center Associate at the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan and serves as the Director of the China Christianity Studies Group, an international scholarly society affiliated with the Association for Asian Studies. He is the co-editor, with Charles Bright, of War and Occupation in China: Letters of an American Missionary from Hangzhou, 1937-1938 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), and has authored journal articles and essays on visual media and cultural history in East Asia.

Since beginning his career at Albion, Dr. Ho has profoundly enjoyed working with Honors students in teaching and mentorship. In the Honors Program, Dr. Ho teaches a Great Issues in Social Science course entitled “American Encounters with China: Cross-Cultural Histories and Global Dynamics,” which traces the multilayered — and often surprising — interactions between the United States and China since 1776. With interdisciplinary activities and sources ranging from novels, magazines, and films to archival documents, historical reenactments, and ballroom dance, students connect past and present to better understand how these countries’ existences are uniquely intertwined.

Dr. Ho firmly believes that Honors students are individuals who combine wide-ranging

interests with strong desires to contribute to the world as well-rounded scholars and

professionals. As he sees it, the Honors Program’s greatest strengths lie its deep focus on academic community, truly mutual learning between students and faculty, and the ability to share intellectual journeys in all of their diversity and uniqueness.

Dr. Ho is an avid photographer and camera collector (not surprisingly), and enjoys biking, amateur astronomy, playing the violin, piano, and organ, and spending time with Jing and their two wonderful children.