Zhou wins Liu Cong Memorial Prize
February 27, 2020
The Center for the Art of East Asia is pleased to announce that the winner of the 2019-2020 Liu Cong Memorial Prize for the Best Essay on East Asian Art and Visual Culture is Zhenru Zhou. The Center Steering Committee congratulates her for her essay, “Escaping from Confinement: Hell Imagery in the Shōjuraigōji Rokudō-e.” Her study of the 12th-13th century paintings of the Six Realms of Buddhist cosmology preserved at the Shōjuraigō Temple in Japan is thoroughly researched, well-argued, and based on visual analysis of complex imagery.
The Liu Cong Memorial Prize recognizes excellent scholarship in East Asian art and visual culture by graduate students at the University of Chicago and encourages the developing of writing skills for publishable essays. The Center for the Art of East Asia established the prize in 2010-11 in memory of former graduate student and Ph.D. candidate in the Art History Department, Liu Cong (1979-2008), a promising young scholar much admired for her talent and vitality of mind and spirit who was struck down by brain cancer.
