History professor Selda Altan granted tenure

Selda Altan

History professor Selda Altan has been granted tenure by the Randolph College Board of Trustees. 

Altan, who came to Randolph in 2019, received a B.A. in history and sociology and a master’s degree in history from Bogaziçi University in Istanbul, followed by a PhD in history from New York University. 

A historian of modern China, she specializes in labor history, colonialism, and Global Asia. She has published extensively in her field and presented her research at academic conferences and invited talks, including at Harvard University’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies in 2024. 

Her first book, Chinese Workers of the World: Colonialism, Chinese Labor, and the Yunnan–Indochina Railway (Stanford University Press, 2024), analyzes labor conflicts during the construction of the Yunnan–Indochina railway (1898–1910) within the broader contexts of French colonialism and China’s economic transformations. 

Altan’s research has been supported by numerous grants, among them the Henry Luce Foundation/ACLS Fellowship Program in China Studies, the Mednick Faculty Fellowship Award, and the Stanford University East Asia Library Travel Grant.

At Randolph, she teaches courses on East Asian and Middle Eastern history as well as interdisciplinary courses on Japanese Anime, Chinatowns in the U.S., and Asian Feminisms.