Jessey Choo (Princeton University, 2009) is Associate Professor of Chinese History and Religion at Rutgers University–New Brunswick, where she is a faculty member of the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures and an associate member in Art History, Global Medieval Studies, History, and Religion. She has been a Visiting Scholar at the Institute of History and Philology at Academia Sinica, a Visiting Fellow at the Morphomata Center for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Cologne, and most recently a Member of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study.
Dr Choo is a historian of medieval China (200-1000 CE) and a specialist incommemorative inscriptions. Her research focuses on cultural and religious practices related to childbearing, death, and commemoration, as well as women's acquisition and exercise of personal agency in everyday life. She is currently working on two projects. The first, 'The Blood Debts: Childbearing, Filial Piety, and Women's Soteriology in Chinese Religions, 600–1500 CE,' traces how Blood Lake, a hell for women tied to childbearing, was conceived and enjoyed widespread and enduring acceptance, and how rituals were devised to deliver mothers from it. In doing so, it shows how this Buddho-Daoist reproductive soteriology reflected evolving notions of filial piety and women's agency. The second, 'Allotted: Women's Lives and the Language of Destiny in Medieval China,' investigates how medieval Chinese discourses on fate shaped the interpretation and characterisation of women's lives, as represented in entombed epitaph inscriptions.
Since 2015 Dr Choo has co-led, with Dr Alexei Ditter, the New Frontiers in the Study of Medieval China workshop series, supported by the Tang Research Foundation. Its meetings bring together scholars from North America, East Asia, and Europe across disciplines, aiming to develop methodologies for studying commemorative inscriptions and serving as a forum for international scholarly exchange.
