Interview with 2023 USRA recipient: Jennifer Zhu

Can you start off by sharing the title of your 2023 Undergraduate Student Research Award (USRA) project?
Jennifer Zhu: Reflections and Projections: Mapping Narratives of Political Fear and the Speculative Other in Popular Sci-fi Films

Can you tell us about your research project?
Jennifer Zhu: I was interested in exploring how political messaging manifests in popular film and the role that genre plays in that process. For my project, I watched a bunch of 1950s Cold War-era popular Hollywood sci-fi movies to look into the conventions used to communicate political fear, focusing particularly on representations of the Other. I also mapped out a timeline of significant Cold War events against when movies were created and released to observe how attitudes on the war changed over time and how those shifts manifested in film.

Looking back now, can you share a bit about your experience working on this project?
Jennifer Zhu: I had a lot of fun and learned a lot! Looking back on it now, I feel really grateful for the level of freedom that I was granted to forge my own path and do the project on my own terms. It allowed me to adapt the project and follow my interests as I went along, which I know now is a really rare and valuable opportunity to have in undergrad. I also got very lucky and had an incredible supervisor, Professor Swintak. She’s extremely knowledgeable and has a lot of cool experience both within and outside of academia, and she taught me a lot about research, the process of doing a research project, and life in general. She was very generous with her mentorship, and having the opportunity to work closely with her really changed the way I view interdisciplinarity and approach my studies.

How did the USRA complement or build on your studies in the Arts & Science Program?
Jennifer Zhu: I watch a lot of movies and became really interested in film studies over the course of my degree. I took a film course that I really enjoyed in third year, but I knew that I likely wouldn’t pursue film studies after undergrad, so I saw the USRA as a perfect opportunity to engage meaningfully with film research before I graduated. Doing the USRA connected a lot of thoughts that I had been toying around with in my courses regarding the relationship between pop culture and politics, which was really cool to see. Conversely, the Artsci courses that I had taken came in really handy when it came to analyzing the movies I watched from a critical lens.

Do you have any advice for students interested in applying for an Arts & Science USRA in future?
Jennifer Zhu: I’d advise students to try as much as possible to have a clearly outlined research goal and an actionable, concrete process for accomplishing it within the allotted time. Especially because Arts & Science USRAs span such a broad range of disciplines, it’s easy to get lost in an overly vague topic. Pinpointing specific things you want to learn about or deliver at the end of the summer makes the process of writing the proposal much easier, and it also makes you more likely to finish your project in time. Also, working closely with your supervisor on the proposal is extremely helpful — they likely have a lot of experience writing grant proposals that they can bring to the table, and establishing a solid collaborative relationship with your supervisor early on makes the whole process much easier and more enjoyable.

Any final thoughts?
Jennifer Zhu:  I feel very lucky that I was given the opportunity to dive into something I was really curious about and figure it out as I went without having to conform to a pre-existing mold of what a research project “should” look like. My supervisor encouraged me to make decisions that would result in me having as much fun and learning as much as possible, and I’d advise others to do the same!

Click here to read interviews with the other 2023 USRA recipients.