What can you possibly do with a degree in history? In response to this question, Ryan Mealiffe lists the different career paths that his peers from the Class of 2022 history honors cohort took after graduation. "My peers have gone on to work in politics, libraries, museums, aquariums, the Bureau of Land Management, and one even works on raising and documenting sunken ships." As for Ryan himself, he and two of his peers entered graduate school. They crossed the Atlantic to study at the prestigious University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, and now two of that cohort, Ryan and Estey Chen, sit down with UW History to tell us about their experiences and share a bit about their current research.
One of the first questions a person who goes abroad is asked is about culture shock. Ryan tells us that he didn't really experience that when moving to Oxford. On the contrary, he feels a reverse culture shock when visiting the U.S. "I hadn’t anticipated coming home and instinctively saying 'cheers' to a fast food employee, or wondering why every road feels so wide all of the sudden. Normal becomes strange when what was strange becomes normal."
Ryan’s research follows migratory birds, tracking changing relationships between avifauna and people connected by the wind and water routes of the medieval East Atlantic. His time at UW shaped his unique approach as well as his intellectual interests. While he knew from the beginning of his undergraduate journey that he wanted to major in history, he eventually added a major in anthropology and a minor in philosophy to his degree. But it was through Professor Charity Urbanski's classes on medieval Europe that he discovered his interest in that time period. "I gravitated toward the period for, among other things, the dual familiarity and foreignness of the medieval Latin West and the resulting challenge of imagining medieval life." A casual birdwatcher throughout his life, Ryan began noticing the absence of non-human animals from the sources. "Attempting to envision quotidian scenes, I found the background blurry. I was struck by how often the environment was left out. Without knowing it, I started asking questions about some of environmental history’s central themes: non-human agency, the distinction between nature and culture, and environmental degradation." And so he ended up writing an undergraduate thesis on the socioecological factors that contributed to the English witch trials. After his move to Oxford, he broadened his scope by focusing on human-animal relationships in the medieval world.
Writing birds back into historical narratives about the medieval period, requires a creative approach towards sources. Ryan explains that historians and archivists are often trained to edit animals out of analysis and metadata unless their presence is essential, which makes tracking animals in traditional archives a challenging task. Environmental historian Donald Worster emphasizes the importance of getting outdoors and experiencing nature “as an agent and presence in history.” While the bulk of his sources are literary, Ryan also engages in experimental learning and studying contemporary birds in their environments. "Landscapes, assemblages, genetics, and bodies are themselves archives. Situating the biology of animals in history and understanding the sensory capacities of my avian subjects are foundational for writing a history of birds that, not unlike ornithologists or hunters, can engage the animal perspective to track and approach birds as closely as possible."
Ryan belongs to Wolfson College, a graduate-only college in the University of Oxford, which he appreciates for its egalitarian and open ethos. "It makes for a social environment conducive to finding your footing quickly. Everyone is more or less in the same place in their academic career." Comparing UW and Oxford, Ryan ponders that the latter is way more closed off with the different colleges having their own grounds protected by walls. "While students from one college can access other college grounds, it is not as easy as waltzing into any of the libraries on the UW campus. Some require what feels like the recitation of your life story, others pre-registration, and many do not allow books to be taken out of the library. That took some getting used to." Nonetheless, he really likes the seminar culture and the social and intellectual life in general. "Perhaps under the pressure of the eight-week terms, the academic calendar is supersaturated with lectures, seminars, events, and working, reading, and writing group meetings."
When asked what he misses most about Seattle, Ryan nostalgically speaks of greeting Tahoma (Rainier) after a long Seattle winter and watching the sun set behind the Olympic range. "I didn’t realize how much my mood relied on the landscape until I moved away from Seattle. I grew up along the Santa Cruz Mountains and frequently camped in the Sierras before moving to the Pacific Northwest, so the rolling hills of southeast England, while still beautiful, can feel lackluster in comparison." Leaving Seattle, where he had created lasting friendships, and moving across the Atlantic was bittersweet for Ryan. "Becoming tied up in multiple places is socially and culturally enriching and ironically produces an unappeasable FOMO. Like my avian subjects, my constitution is entangled with various places — just along airplane flyways!"
Like Ryan, Estey Chen also decided to leave Seattle after graduating. Before starting at Oxford, though, she spent two years working in Singapore and Indonesia. She is currently halfway through a two-year master's program in global and area studies, with her research focusing on the evolution of Southeast Asian foreign policy, a topic inspired by her work experience in the region as well as her undergraduate research on the Asian-African Conference and Sino-Indian Border War.
Estey moved to the UK from Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia, where she did a fellowship as a political analyst for a government affairs consultancy. She describes her transition from Indonesia to the UK as being filled with cultural amusement. "For example, crossing the road in most of Southeast Asia has a reputation for being daunting and dangerous given the general disregard for traffic laws and sheer number of drivers. In my experience, though, there’s a method to the madness and the key is to step confidently into the incoming rush of motorbikes and maintain a steady walking pace. The motorbikes reliably yield to pedestrians. In Oxford, it sometimes feels like the cars are trying to accelerate into you." She also struggled getting used to the food in the UK and misses the culinary abundance of Indonesia. She has found comfort, however, in the warm curries and crisp falafel made by immigrant food vendors.
The quality of food notwithstanding, Estey really likes studying at Oxford. She especially appreciates the social life found at the university. "Curiosity is in the air and it manifests in both the social and research landscape." As a member of St Hugh’s College, one of the first women’s colleges at Oxford, Estey has the chance to live amongst and befriend students studying everything from medicine and public policy to English and economics. "I’ve had the opportunity to chat with table-mates during formal dinners whose research is as niche as the colonial origins of standardized music tests to indigenous youth activism in the Arctic."
Estey is also delighted by the abundance of extracurricular opportunities. Although rooted in area studies, Estey contributes to St. Antony's International Review, a student-run publication associated with St. Antony's College and comprised of postgraduate and undergraduate students from across the university. She also enjoys attending screenings run by the International Film Society and Global South Film Society. "Students are committed to their research, yes, but they also have diverse interests outside of the classroom."
Estey feels that her undergraduate studies at the UW prepared her well for her academic career at Oxford. Her research examines the diplomatic and transnational histories of Indonesia’s foreign relations with Taiwan and China during the Cold War. "My history training at UW equipped me to compare areas through thematic lenses and within a broader global context." It was through an honors seminar with Professor Ileana Rodriguez-Silva that she acquired the vocabulary to describe the puzzles that had long animated her academic interests. "Learning about 'transnationalism' for the first time blew my mind." Furthermore, her courses, such as Professor Kyle Haddad-Fonda’s course on the Cold War and Professor Hajin Jun’s “Modern Korean History,” taught her to think about the interconnectedness of domestic and international developments in Asia while Professor Anand Yang’s “History by Bollywood: Colonial India through Film” and Professor Madeleine Dong’s class on Chinese social history made her think more critically about primary sources. Her time within UW History also taught her to recognize and analyze how histories are manipulated for state-building and justifying controversial foreign policy decisions. "These courses and the mentorship I’ve received from UW history professors has shaped my analytical approach, which blends the global outlook of international relations and comparative area studies with history’s attention to nuance and moral complexity."
A native of Seattle, Estey misses Seattle’s food and farmers markets. "I’m feeling sorely out of the loop with the restaurant and cafe scene. I’m dying to try Hey Bagel in U-Village and eat a steaming bowl of pho."