Seokweon Jeon is a doctoral candidate in the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University (fields: North American Religions & History) and a Graduate Student Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. As a religious historian of modern America with a particular emphasis on ‘MBC’ (migration, borders, and citizenship), Asian America, and US imperialism, his research examines how religion and Asian migration have shaped modern American conceptions of borders, citizenship, and national belonging.
His Dissertation, “Sacred Borders, Divine Hierarchies: American Liberal Protestants, US Immigration Policymaking, and Un/Making of the Asian Exclusion Era, 1882-1924,” is a historical study of the religious-moral dimensions of U.S. immigration policies. It argues that early Asian immigration restrictions were not merely legislative or economic projects but deeply moral and theological endeavors. Centering religion in immigration policymaking between the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Immigration Act of 1924, the project shows how American liberal Protestants helped craft racially restrictive and religiously coded immigration laws, translating their theological and cultural commitments into state policy. By foregrounding how what he calls ‘moral policing’ and religious gatekeeping became central to broader exclusionary frameworks, the project reveals the ways in which religious actors and rhetoric redefined legal and popular categories of immigrant worthiness, embedding distinctions between the “deserving” and “undeserving”—and between the assimilable and the unassimilable—within a broader moral-political framework of immigration restrictions. He expects to complete his dissertation in Spring 2026, with Catherine Brekus (chair), David F. Holland, and Erika Lee serving on his dissertation committee.
His research has been supported by the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Rockefeller Archive Center, the Asian Pacific American Religions Research Initiative (APARRI), the American Academy of Religion (AAR), and the Organization of American Historians (OAH), among others.
At Harvard, Seokweon has worked closely with Harvard’s Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, and Rights where he served as a coordinator for the Asian American Pacific Islander Studies Working Group and taught an entry-level AAPI studies course for two years. He holds a BA (Sociology, Theology) and ThM (History of Christianity) from Yonsei University, Seoul, and an MTS from Harvard Divinity School. His recent interview and research were featured in the September 2024 issue of Harvard’s GSAS Research Magazine.
For more information, please visit Seokweon’s personal website here.