Interviews with Sammy Zimmerman and Henry Hong on their Research and Involvement with the Chicago Journal of History

Current History major, Henry Hong, and 2024 graduate, Sammy Zimmerman, will be featured in the next edition of the Chicago Journal of History, published by UChicago undergraduates. The issue will contain only their work, celebrating  their significant involvement with CJH as editors.

Sammy Aiko Zimmerman graduated from the University of Chicago in 2024 with a B.A. in History and English Language & Literature. Their academic work focused on the relationships between literature, aesthetics, race, and imperialism in 19th-century Britain and Japan. Their scholarship has appeared in The Rock Creek Review and is forthcoming in Synthesis and the Chicago Journal of History. During their time at UChicago, they also served on the editorial boards of the Chicago Journal of History, Euphony, and Sliced Bread, and volunteered as an English tutor with Hyde Park Refugee Project. 

Henry Hong is fourth-year who is in the BA/MA program where he is pursing a BA in history and an MA in international relations. He is the treasurer for the Society for International Relations and a committee chair in the Model United Nations of the University of Chicago (MUNUC). 

Below are Sammy Zimmerman and Henry Hong's interviews, respectively. Both describe their research, the papers to be published in CJH, their time at UChicago and future plans. 

INTERVIEW WITH SAMMY ZIMMERMAN

1. Your thesis, “Haunted Empire: Gothic Japanism in British Literature of the Fin de Siècle,” is expansive and interdisciplinary, meeting (and exceeding) the thesis requirements for both of your majors, History and English Language & Literature. How did you negotiate the inherent tensions in the fields and multi-ethnic perspectives?

I couldn’t watch scary movies until I was about fifteen because, as my mother will tell you, as a child I had trouble distinguishing between fiction and real life. I watch lots of horror movies now, but I also recognize, as an adult, that there is not such a clean line between fiction and non-fiction; that what we encounter as mere representation has real bearing on what we understand to be true, and that the objective historical conditions of our lives precondition what we produce as fiction. In other words, I work in both history and literature because I see each as incomplete without the other. Methodologically and theoretically, I am indebted to critics like Edward Said, Raymond Williams, Fredric Jameson, and György Lukács, who have made this point in much more nuanced and interesting ways.

In fact, a secondary contention of my thesis is that this interdisciplinary approach is necessary to do justice to the texts and time period I deal with, because the dissemination of information about the “real” Japan in the late 19th century was so inseparable from fictionality, and vice versa. The paper’s opening anecdote comes from the memoir of a British diplomat, who wrote a wonderfully fanciful (and misremembered) account of a real procession of Tokugawa troops, which he describes in terms of fictional beings — namely, medieval ghosts and hobgoblins. In order to understand how Mitford experienced the world at that moment, we have to understand not only the objective historical movements of the shogun’s troops, but also the literary forms to which Mitford made reference in his subjective narration of this moment. 

This is all to say that while, of course, there were challenges and tensions to working between disciplines, I really saw it as more of an opportunity than an obstacle. I got to experiment with method, incorporating skills from both disciplines — for example, I used far more archival sources than an English paper usually does, and did a lot more close reading than a History paper usually allows for. In doing so, I created something that felt quite organic to my subject matter and to the way I think about the world myself.

As for the multi-ethnic aspect — I was really excited to work on this topic because I’m half Japanese and half Irish, and have spent time studying both Japanese and British history and literature. Not many scholars who have worked on Western ideas of Japan actually read Japanese or have studied Japanese history, so I felt that that was an opportunity for me to improve upon existing scholarship. For people like myself and the writers I studied, the distinctions we make in academia between “British studies” and “Japanese studies” can actually disrupt and obscure the multi-ethnic and transnational quality of lived experience, just as the distinction between fiction and non-fiction can obscure their co-constitution. I am interested in continuing to push disciplinary and geographic boundaries even further — an ideal, and much longer, version of this project would look at Japanese texts from the same time period and how they responded to the influx of British people and British writings on Japan. For me, this kind of interdisciplinary and multi-ethnic work is a really exciting space of possibility that I have just begun to explore.

2. In your thesis, you focus on three “Gothic images —the ghost, the Doppelgänger, and the corpse.” Can you explain what makes these decidedly Gothic?

I took a historically grounded approach to defining the Gothic, so rather than just relying on a Gothic “vibe,” I looked for specific images, affective modes, and narrative forms that had appeared in the canon of 18th- and 19th-century Gothic literature. I drew on decades of work by literary scholars who have identified key characteristics of the Gothic genre — which include antiquated settings, supernatural elements, unstable boundaries, feelings of horror and terror, narratives of entrapment and concealment, and a preoccupation with history. Ghosts, Doppelgängers, and corpses are all quite familiar figures within the world of Gothic literature, and when discussing each image I made reference to how it has appeared in the Gothic canon as well as in secondary literature. 

In this paper, I emphasized the Gothic’s concern with limits and transgressions thereof, and its ability to encompass the resulting ambiguities and contradictions. Thus, the ghost engenders a transgression of the limit between life and death, the Doppelgänger between self and other, and the corpse between subject and object. The Gothic framework of limit and transgression then allows me to make the connection between these fictional forms and the very real ways in which people were thinking about the Japan-West relationship at the end of the 19th century.

3. What did you find to be the most challenging aspect of writing your thesis? What was the most rewarding?

Honestly, the most challenging part for me was choosing a topic. I had a general idea of what I wanted to research — my initial proposal was “race and imperialism in the Victorian Gothic” — but it was difficult to narrow that down to a more specific research question that was original, feasible, and exciting enough to me that I would want to write 40-60 pages about it. As I started reading into the existing scholarship and realized that there are already about a hundred articles on race in Dracula, I started to worry that that territory was already covered and I didn’t have anything new to contribute. But I had also been learning Japanese and studying Japanese history, and I noticed that East Asia was almost entirely absent from the existing literature. I started to wonder if I could combine my interests in Victorian literature and Japanese history. Now I had the opposite problem: I wasn’t sure I would be able to find sufficient primary or secondary sources. Luckily, I remembered an amazing class I had taken — Things Japanese with Prof. James Ketelaar — where I had noticed some Gothic elements in the texts we were reading, and I started from there. In the end, I took a risk on a weirder, more difficult topic that I was really excited about, and it definitely paid off. 

The most rewarding aspect was seeing everything come together in the end, despite all of my initial doubts and misgivings. At the beginning, researching a topic for a year and writing 40-60 pages on it was a daunting prospect; it was definitely the biggest intellectual and creative challenge I had ever taken on. But as I started to read and write, things fell into place little by little, and my confidence in my own abilities as a scholar increased. Sharing drafts with my advisors and thesis cohorts was always intimidating but also incredibly rewarding when I realized that my research and ideas were actually connecting with people and making them think about things in a different light. Perhaps the final product feels so rewarding because the process of creating it felt so risky and vulnerable; I had a lot of amazing support, but fundamentally this was a self-directed project, I was calling the shots, and I had to learn to trust myself and my ideas. Now I have this beautiful 65-page .docx file to call my own. But, seriously, it’s really nice to know that I’m capable of doing something like this, and I’m really glad I chose to write a B.A. thesis — ultimately, the process of writing it was really its own reward.

4. Now that you have graduated, what are your post-collegiate plans? 

Grad school, eventually! I found the experience of doing academic research and writing as an undergraduate extremely exciting and fulfilling — it just kind of clicked for me, and is definitely something I hope to continue to pursue in the future.  Per advice I received from current grad students and professors, though, I’m taking a few years away from academia to work, save up a bit, and study on my own for now. I worked at the Art Institute while I was at UChicago, and I really enjoyed that, so I’m hoping to stay in museums for a few more years. But eventually I’m hoping to pursue a PhD in Comparative Literature or Japanese Literature, and maybe continue to expand on my undergraduate thesis work. 

5. How did you become part of the CJH and what did your role as editor entail? You also edited at two other publications. How do the three experiences compare? 

I applied to be a Senior Editor for CJH after seeing a flyer on one of the posting boards at Harper — I was already involved with Euphony and Sliced Bread, but I hadn’t edited an academic publication before, so I thought that might be an interesting experience. Somehow or other my application was successful, and I got to be part of the team that revitalized CJH after it had been dormant for a while, which was so much fun. 

Every quarter, the editors read dozens of submissions and evaluate them for argumentation, depth of research, structure, style, and interest. Papers go through multiple rounds of evaluations before we vote on the top 3-5 to make it to the issue, and then a round of revisions before they appear in print. Every editor participates in evaluating, selecting, and revising submissions, but as a Senior Editor I also had more of a leadership position: most of the process of evaluation and revision actually happens in smaller teams of 3-4 editors, and each of those teams is headed by at least one Senior Editor, who takes charge of coordinating meeting times, communicating back to the managing ed, and logistical tasks like that. Being an editor at CJH was an amazing opportunity to connect with other History majors at UChicago and to read some incredible work from undergraduate History students across the world.

Euphony and Sliced Bread are both literary journals, so the content is quite different from CJH, but I found that the editorial skills required were surprisingly consistent across all three journals. It’s all about being able to read a piece efficiently, identify its specific strengths and weaknesses, and then communicate your opinions to your peers while remaining open to debate and different perspectives. Each editorial team cultivated a unique shared sensibility as we worked together, constantly challenging and influencing each other, and the feeling of holding a new issue in my hand never ceased to be a bit miraculous. The main difference was that CJH has a much more extensive revision process, so editors have a bigger say in what the final texts actually look like — both a privilege and a big responsibility. 

6. You volunteered as an English tutor with the Hyde Park Refugee Project. What was notable about your work and the people you worked with? Have you been able to maintain relationships with any of the people you tutored? 

I think that, perhaps especially as scholars in the humanities and social sciences, it is so important to remember that our work takes place within the material context of the University and that the University is not isolated from but deeply implicated in the Hyde Park community and broader national and international systems of distributing wealth, knowledge, and power. Getting involved with HPRP was a small way for me to decenter myself and work on building community. The family I worked with has faced hardships far beyond anything I have experienced, and beyond what any human being should have to experience, but despite the difficulties they faced, they were always unbelievably gracious, funny, and kind. I was there to tutor them in English, but I think that they gave me far more than I gave them: they welcomed me into their home, fed me delicious homemade food, and opened up to me about their lives and culture. I am still in contact with the mother, my primary student, and she sometimes sends me pictures and videos of her beautiful daughter. I miss seeing them every week — it was always a really lovely and grounding experience to take a break from classes and homework and focus on being there with them. I can’t recommend HPRP enough to other UChicago students, faculty, and community members!

7. What do you miss the most about your time at UChicago? 

I miss being part of such a vibrant intellectual community! Whether through classes, RSOs, my thesis cohort, campus events, or just sitting and working at the Reg, I was always surrounded by interesting people who wanted to talk about literature, art, history, politics, and society, people who were genuinely curious about the world around them and equally curious to hear dissenting voices. It’s a cliché about UChicago, but one that happens to be true: you really can go to any campus bar or café and overhear a discussion about Marxist poetics, or Hungarian electoral politics, or the philosophical underpinnings of Love is Blind. I never felt like I had to dumb myself down, and I was constantly learning from and being challenged by the people around me. I miss running into my friends on the first level of the Reg and sharing updates on our class readings. I miss going to Night Owls and debating the topic at hand long after the event was over. I miss the flyers on the walls of every building and the musings in Sharpie on the insides of bathroom stalls. The community I found at UChicago made me feel welcomed, inspired, challenged, and like I was a part of something dynamic and vital; I will always be thankful for that. 

INTERVIEW WITH HENRY HONG

1. What led you to pursue the BA/MA program? 

The BA/MA program is an amazing opportunity that our school has. I was always thinking about it since I started here as it allows me to simultaneously explore two of my interests while pursuing an advanced degree. It also is an opportunity to continue to be in classes with incredibly smart and driven students from various disciplines. 

2. How do you see your History major and International Relations MA working together?

I am really excited for this combination of fields. I am planning on writing a joint thesis for this program. My background in history gives me a different perspective of international relations than most of the other students in the program. My academic interests focus primarily on memory and nationalism. Both history and international relations have different ways of using of these two concepts. I am interested in bringing memory, especially nationalist shared memory, to understand current trends within international relations. I will go into further detail in question 7. 

3. I can see that you are quite active with RSOs. In particular, you are the committee chair for INTERPOL on MUNUC (Model United Nations of the University of Chicago). What led you to run for that position?

I have been a member of MUNUC since my first year at the College. It has always been an amazing community and an RSO that I have enjoyed being part of.  By being a chair, I have opportunity to continue to create a welcoming and fun space that I have been so lucky to be a part of.

4. What has been your involvement with CJH and what drew you to the initially publication?

I remember seeing posters for CJH during my second year when Jack, the editor-in-chief, was restarting the publication. I was immediately interested because I wanted to be more engaged with the history community on campus and this felt like a great opportunity to work with people who came to history from different perspective and interests. I applied to be an editor and am currently one of the senior editors. And I have edited papers in both of our most recent publications.

5. Do you anticipate remaining active in politics once you earn your degrees at UChicago? If not, what are your post-collegiate plans?

Yes, I am interested in pursuing a career in the federal government. I am not sure if that will end up being political or within the bureaucracy, but I do know that I want a career within public service. The BA/MA program sets me up to have a breadth of options. Currently, I am applying for fellowship for one-two year assignments in the federal government and programs like the Fulbright English Teaching Assistant and, hopefully, if I get one, after one of these positions, I want to go to law school.

6. The paper you will be publishing in the journal “Double Decker Dualism: Discourse on Display”, is a public history project. Can you describe the project that inspired it? 

Double Decker Dualism: Discourse on Display was my final paper for the history colloquium class. For this class, we had to pick a museum and write a paper on it. This allowed for a lot of freedom. I picked the Chinese American Museum of Chicago (CAMOC) because it was pretty accessible from our campus, and it is a representation of the Asian American community in Chicago and the Midwest which interests me as I am half-Korean and from the suburbs of Chicago. I visited this museum before writing and I did not really have any idea what I was getting myself into. During my visit, I was fascinated by how different the two floors within the museum were and how the museum’s location in Chinatown placed it as a voice of the community. This inspired to write my paper which focuses on the tension within the display of the museum and how this reflects its dual role as an educator and an advocate. 

7. I’d love to hear more about the thesis project you are working on. Can you describe not only its topic but also your central argument? How does it connect to both your BA and MA projects? 

My thesis project focuses on three sites in Jinju, South Korea. These three memorial sites, take form as a museum, a memorial, and a Buddhist temple. They are all dedicated to the remembrance of the battle of Jinju in modern day South Korea that took place during the Imjin War from 1592 to 1598. The Imjin War was a major war that involved Japan, Chosŏn Korea, and Ming China. I am interested in the different time periods these sites were built with the Buddhist temple being built in the early 17th century, the memorial in 1987, the same year as the democratization of South Korea, and the museum being revamped in 2018. All three reflect simultaneously differing and similar memories and interpretations of the invasion of Jinju. These memorial sites are extremely nationalistic, and this thesis will attempt to utilize the study of nationalism and memory studies to better understand how nationalism transcends time through the memory, and especially how a modern South Korean government attempts to portray continuity through maintaining a memory of Chosŏn.

This topic allows for a combination of history and international relations. Memory studies are grounded in history scholarship while nationalism helps connect history and international relations. The base of the thesis will be historical and focus on the usage of these sites to create/alter shared national memory to allow nationalism to transcend time. This will be expanded upon in an international relations focused section which will discuss the contemporary implications of memory and nationalism in the foreign relations between Japan and South Korea.

I am extremely lucky have been able to go to Jinju, South Korea just before school started again thanks to the history department’s undergraduate thesis research grant funding!