Will Sack

Research

My dissertation, “Imperial Extension: 4-H and the Hollowing Out of Rural East Asia,” is an inter-imperial history of rural development. Although often associated with state fair pageantry, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s youth club 4-H is an instrument of “technical extension” and, as a result, a powerful conduit of state power. Such extension reshapes countrysides by spreading new technologies and techniques into rural lives and landscape – and that political project reached its peak in Cold War East Asia. The technologies and projects which the USDA ‘extended’ in East Asia, however, were more often from imperial Japan than from the core US. Technological and personnel continuities from the Japanese empire helped make 4-H one of the largest rural institutions (by number of participants) in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan after 1945. In fact, the common language of international exchanges in 4-H Asia was Japanese well into the 1960s. Thus, Japanese and American technology and influence converged in 4-H – that is, in the “Heads, Hands, Hearts and Health” of so many young people growing up in the shadow of multiple empires.

Exploring overlapping trajectories of empire and rural development in Hawai‘i, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, “Imperial Extension” offers a portrait of Japanese influence against and then within American hegemony – and it does so on a far more human scale than the global vistas such narratives usually offer. Towards that end, I have conducted extensive grassroots document gathering, while drawing from more than thirty archives, including the previously sequestered private holdings of 4-H Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. I have also augmented those written materials with more than thirty on-the-record oral histories and many more informal interviews. My goal is to understand what “growing up with 4-H” meant, and how the institution changed environments and societies through new chemicals and machinery. Ultimately, I show how technical extension supported Japan’s sustained preeminence in East Asia, as well as the Green Revolution, and the region’s rapid urbanization.

• 30+archives, including the previously closed holdings of 4-H Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea
• 30+on-the-record oral histories

Selected fellowships and affiliations

• Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship, Taiwan2024
• Fulbright Graduate Research Fellowship (IIE), Japan2022–23
• Visiting Research Student, Institute of Taiwan History, Academia Sinica2024
• Visiting Researcher, Faculty of Agriculture, Kagoshima University2023
• Special Research Student, Faculty of Agriculture, Kyoto University2022–23
• Filson Research Fellowship, Filson Historical Society2024
• Kentucky Historical Society Fellowship2023
• Kyujanggak Junior Fellowship, Seoul National University (declined)2023
• Blakemore Fellowship, South Korea2018–19
• Frederick Sheldon Travel Fellowship, PRC and Japan2017–18

Publications

Articles

1. Forthcoming“4-H’s Pacific Century: Americanization in the Wake of the Japanese Empire”Diplomatic History
2. 2026“Zoonotic Public Health Risks in Farmed versus Wild-Caught Wildlife for Traditional Markets for Food: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis”Co-author. One Health (Elsevier). doi:10.1016/j.onehlt.2026.101592. Part of the systematic review “Mitigating the Risk of Zoonotic Pathogens from Live Animals and Animal Products Associated with Traditional Markets,” to inform a World Health Organization (WHO) guideline, 2025. Role: translation and interpretation of Chinese-language sources; screening, data extraction, and review for the People’s Republic of China.
3. 2025“Ecology and Colonialism in Late Chosŏn Korea: Ullŭngdo, 1882–1905”Past & Present 266, no. 1 (February 2025): 118–149. Read free

In review and ready for submission

1. R&R“Carbon Ethnicity: An Oral History of Coal, the Japanese Empire, and a Chinese Diaspora in Maritime Southeast Asia, 1941–66”Revise and resubmit (minor revisions), Modern Asian Studies
2. Prepared“Breeding Capital: A Livestock Bank in South Korea and the Search for Species History”Fully prepared for submission

Reviews

1. ForthcomingReview of Q. Edward Wang, From Staple to Superfood: A Global History of the Sweet PotatoAgricultural History
2. 2023Review essay on Wu Jieh-min, Rival Partners: How Taiwanese Entrepreneurs and Guangdong Officials Forged the China Development ModelThe PRC History Review, no. 60 (August 2023): 1–12. Read

Talks

Upcoming

1. Dec 2026“The Richest Poor Folks: Agricultural Schools and Farm Politics in Yunlin County, Taiwan, 1950–1988” InvitedAsia’s Agrarian and Environmental Pasts workshop, Boston University
2. Mar 2027“In the Cataracts: Technical Extension and Urbanization in Japan since 1922”Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting · panel co-organizer
3. Apr 2027“Breeding Capital: A Livestock Bank in South Korea and the Search for Species History”American Society for Environmental History Annual Meeting · panel organizer

Invited talks

1. Jul 2024“From Water Buffalo to ‘Iron Buffalo’: 4-H and the Mechanization of Postwar Taiwanese Agriculture”Institute of Taiwan History, Academia Sinica · in Mandarin
2. May 2024“Nutrition Improvement Activities of the USDA’s 4-H Clubs in Postwar Asia”History of Modern Medicine Seminar, National Cheng Kung University · in Mandarin and Hokkien
3. May 2024“4-H and Home Economics in Postwar East Asia”Social History of Life in Modern Taiwan Seminar, National Taiwan University · in Mandarin
4. May 2024“The Return of Taiwanese History in America”National Cheng Kung University · in Mandarin and Hokkien
5. Jan 2024“Kentucky in Northeast Asia’s Green Revolution”Kentucky Historical Society
6. Jul 2023“The Genealogy and Activities of Agricultural Extension in the United States Civil Administration of the Ryukyu Islands (1950–1972)”Agricultural History Seminar, Kyoto University · in Japanese
7. Mar 2023“‘Tie Your Lives to Cows!’: America’s 4-H Clubs in Hokkaido”International History of East Asia Seminar, University of Oxford
8. Feb 2023“A Modern History of 4-H Clubs between Japan and the United States: Agricultural Extension, Urbanization, and Rural Youth”Kagoshima Agriculture Consortium, Kagoshima University · in Japanese
9. Nov 2022“Nagata Shigeshi’s Second Act (1945–1973)”Agricultural History Seminar, Kyoto University · in Japanese
10. Feb 2022“‘Let’s Use Yams as Capital’: Finance, Urbanization, and America’s 4-H Clubs in Rural South Korea (1960–1980)”Global Urban History Program, “Cities, Empires, and their (Dis)Contents”

Conference papers at the AHA, AAS, ASEH, HSS, and Agricultural History Society are listed in the CV.

Teaching

Instructor of record

1. Spring 2026HIST 162: Oral Histories of Asian America: Migration, Memory, MethodHistory Prize Instructorship: competitive appointment based on teaching evaluations and syllabus design; three to four awarded annually from a pool of forty or more. Designed and taught a ten-student seminar. Instructor evaluation 5.00 / 5.00.

Teaching fellow

1. Fall 2025HIST 76: The History of Energy
2. Spring 2025CHNSHIS 146: The Modern History of Rural China
3. Spring 2025HIST 1465: The United States and World Order since 1900
4. Fall 2024HIST 15E: Writing Histories of Climate Change

Advising

• Senior theses advised: four, including two Hoopes Prize recipients and one Noma-Reischauer Prize recipient2025–27
• Advising & mentoring: seven undergraduates (including one Marshall Scholarship recipient) and four A.M. students
• Senior thesis reader, Dept. of History: six theses2022–26

Public History

Projects

1. OngoingThe Chinese Families of Kentucky ProjectPrincipal Investigator and sole author. Long-term agreements with the Crane House (Kentucky’s main Asian American community center) and Thomas D. Clark Center for Kentucky History (the Kentucky Historical Society Museum). Minimum output: an essay collection and a museum update.
2. OngoingLu Ji-ying Diary SeriesSole translator for English and team member, Lu Ji-ying Diary Series Preparation Group (transcription, contextualization, annotation of Taiwan’s longest known personal diary, written in Japanese, Hokkien and Mandarin from 1933 to 2004), Institute for Taiwan History at Academia Sinica and National Museum of Taiwan History. Expected output: published, annotated diary series, and articles in English and Mandarin.

Writing, interviews, and translation

1. In progressPak So-Ran 박소란, There Is 〈있다〉Co-translator, a team translation of a poetry collection, supported by the Literature Translation Institute (LTI) of Korea. In contract negotiations.
2. 2024English introduction to the Japan 4H Newspaper reprint collectionVol. 1, Agriculture and Regions in Postwar Japan Primary Source Series, Fuji Press. Prospectus
3. 2024“Kentucky in Northeast Asia’s Green Revolution”Interview, Kentucky Chronicles podcast, Kentucky Historical Society. Listen
4. 2022“외국인 연구자로서 바라본 한국4-H운동의 성과와 의미”“A Foreign Researcher Looks at Korea 4-H’s Accomplishments and Meaning,” Korea 4-H Newspaper, by invitation · in Korean. Read
5. 2018“Not Mandarin: An Invitation to Speak Other Chineses”Los Angeles Review of Books, China Channel. Read
6. 2018“Smartphone Dialects”Los Angeles Review of Books, China Channel. Read
7. 2017“The Divine Flesh”Translation of Xingzi’s Jishen, vol. 1, chs. 0–2, for the Taiwan Ministry of Culture’s Books from Taiwan series

Research languages

Japanese 日本語

Professional fluency

Korean 한국어

Professional fluency

Mandarin 華語

Professional fluency

Hokkien 閩南語（台語）

Advanced, several dialects

Khalkha Mongolian Монгол

Advanced

Indonesian

Upper-intermediate, ongoing

Classical Chinese

Reading, including Korean hanmun

Classical Japanese

Reading bungotai, sōrōbun, and kuzushiji

Curriculum vitae