Christopher Hulshof

Biography

I am a historian of empire, covert operations, and international power projection in Southeast Asia during the twentieth century. My work explores how the post–World War II world order emerged not through unilateral Western design but through contested, multilinear interactions among U.S. agents, European interlocutors, and Southeast Asian political elites. I focus especially on how furtive diplomacy, militarism, and trans-imperial entanglements shaped local independence movements and global structures of power. My dissertation examines four Southeast Asian case studies—Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaya, and the Philippines—to reassess the foundations of U.S. global hegemony during the Cold War.

I have designed and taught undergraduate courses on Southeast Asian literature and history, the Cold War, U.S. foreign relations, covert operations, and comparative empire. I also mentor graduate students through the Graduate Education in Southeast Asia (GETSEA) consortium and the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR), supporting professional development, innovative research, collaborative scholarship, and foreign language acquisition across institutions. Beyond the classroom, I am committed to public-facing work that engages contemporary political and cultural issues across Southeast Asia.

But ultimately, I just like history. And it likes me.

Education

M.A., Southeast Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin Madison, 2021
M.A., History, University of Wisconsin Madison, 2020
B.A., History, University of California Berkeley, 2018

Field

• Southeast Asian History

MA Title

• “A Simulacrum of Change: An Analysis of Crisis Points in the Proliferation of U.S. Global Hegemony Through the Foreign Relations of the United States” (History M.A.)
• “Sangsara and San Sara: Collective Memory & Policy Nuance on Occupied Java, 1942-45” (Southeast Asian Studies M.A.)

Courses Taught as TA

• History 246 – Southeast Asian Refugees of the Cold War (Spring 2020)
• History 319 – The Vietnam Wars (Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Fall 2021)
• History 375 – The Cold Wars (Spring 2022, Spring 2026)

Course Taught as Instructor

• History 221 – The CIA: US Psychological Warfare & Covert Ops (Summer 2025, Summer 2026)
• History 319 – The Vietnam Wars (Fall 2022, Fall 2025)
• Asian Studies (ASAN) 361 / Indo-Pacific Languages & Cultures (IP) 361 – Southeast Asian Literature in Translation (University of Hawai’i at Manoa, Fall 2024)