Jessey Choo (Ph.D., Princeton) is an Associate Professor of Chinese History and Religion at Rutgers University–New Brunswick. As a historian specializing in China’s medieval period (200–1000 CE), her research focuses on cultural and religious practices related to childbearing, death, and memory, as well as women’s acquisition and exercise of personal agency in everyday life.
Her first book, Inscribing Death: Burials, Representations, and Remembrance in Tang China, 618–907 CE (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2022), explores how people in late medieval China used burial and entombed epitaph inscriptions (muzhiming) to fashion and preserve the identities and memories of the dead, themselves, and their families. She is currently working on two book-length monographs. The first, “The Blood Debts: Childbearing, Filial Piety, and Women’s Soteriology in Chinese Religions, 600–1500 CE,” examines a Buddho-Daoist reproductive soteriology, showing how religious discourses on women’s salvation reflected evolving notions of filial piety and women’s agency. The second, “Allotted: Women’s Lives and the Language of Destiny in Medieval China, explores the gendered understanding of individual destiny (ming 命),” investigating how medieval Chinese discourses on fate shaped the interpretation and characterization of women’s lives, particularly as understood and expressed by women themselves.
She is also co-editor of Early Medieval China: A Sourcebook (Columbia University Press, 2014), Tales from Tang Dynasty China: Selections from the Taiping Guangji (Hackett Publishing Co., 2017), and The Study of Medieval Chinese Entombed Epitaphs (Brill). Her research has been supported by multiple grants and fellowships, most recently a membership at the Institute for Advanced Study (2024–25).
Education
- Ph.D. Princeton University, 2009
- M.A. Princeton University, 2003
- M.A. University of Toronto, 1998
- B.A. University of Rochester, 1997
Areas of Specialization
- Cultural Memory
- Entombed Epigraphy
- Everyday life
- Women and Gender
Books
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Selected Publications
- Choo, Jessey. Inscribing Death: Burials, Representations, and Remembrance in Tang China. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press., 2022.
- Choo, Jessey and Alexei K. Ditter. “In Plain Sight: A New Approach to Reading Muzhiming, Using Shangguan Wan’er 上官婉兒 (664–710) as a Case Study.” T’oung Pao 107 (2021): 319–376.
- Choo, Jessey. “Shall We Profane the Service of the Dead?—Burial Divination and Remembrance in Late Medieval Muzhiming.” Tang Studies 33 (2015): 1–37.
- Choo, Jessey. “That 'Fatty Lump': Discourses on the Fetus, Fetal Development, and Filial Piety in Early Imperial China.” Nan Nü: Men, Women and Gender in Early and Imperial China 14.2 (2012): 177–221.
Recent Courses :
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Major Traditions in Chinese Thought (01:165:341)
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Early “China" in the World (01:165:471 / 16:217:529)
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Women in Pre-Modern China (01:165:476 / 16:217:515)
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Women and Gender in East Asian Religiosity (01:098:477 / 16:217:517 / 16:840:583)
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Pro-Seminar I: Approaches to East Asian Studies (16:217:501)
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Pro-Seminar II: Research Methodology (16:217:502)
Selected Awards and Distinctions
- Institute for Advanced Study Membership (2024-2025)