Melody Shum

From: Haydon Cherry via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2025 3:34 AM
To: vsg@u.washington.edu
Subject: [Vsg] Congratulations to Melody Shum!

Dear List,

It is my great pleasure to announce that on October 20, Melody Shum successfully defended her dissertation in the Department of History at Northwestern University, titled "The Vietnamese Revolutionary Underground in South China: Native Place, Legal Imperialism, and Spaces of Insurrection (c.1880-1940)." This innovative, beautifully written study details the lives of three generations of the Hồ family from Nghệ An province and their contributions to the braided revolutions in both Vietnam and China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

It follows the itineraries of matriarch Trần Thị Trâm, Hồ Học Lãm, the famous revolutionary Hồ Tùng Mậu, and finally Hồ Diệc Lan. The study draws on memoirs, family genealogies, inscriptions, shrine tablets, and archival and private documents in French, romanised Vietnamese, Literary Sinitic, and modern Chinese, among other materials. The dissertation is a compelling example of multi-archival, multi-lingual, transnational research. It also makes deft use of gender theory, kinship studies, and theories about inter-generational trauma. It demonstrates, among other things, the ongoing importance of Literary Sinitic for understanding modern Vietnamese history, well into the mid-twentieth century. I feel confident that the resulting monograph will become a landmark in our field.

Congratulations, Melody! And what an honour it has been working with you!

Yours,

Haydon Cherry