Professor Sookja Cho “Around the Sacred and the Secular”
Professor Sookja Cho as a 2011 A.T. Steele Faculty Grant awardee for her work “Around the Sacred and the Secular.” This project builds on myCho_PIC 2nd doctoral dissertation, which focuses on the story of Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai (abbreviated to Liang‐Zhu) in China and Korea, specifically on the issues related to 1) the local origins and religious connections of the story in China; and 2) the Korean reception of the story along the religious exchange routes between Zhejiang China and Southern Korean waterways during the 12th‐14th centuries. The ultimate goal of this study is to show how one local love tale from Zhejiang has resided in, carried out, traveled through, and multiplied throughout numerous localities of China and Korea; it has served as a popular religious story and a common, yet not well‐acknowledged vessel of healing and comforting people in need.