Maristella Spur Successfully Defends PhD Dissertation

11 May 2026

Photo: CSMC

Congratulations to Maristella Spur on defending her doctoral dissertation and completing her PhD in Korean Studies! The viva voce examination took place on 5 May 2026.

Maristella Spur’s dissertation examines an early Korean cookbook written around 1670 by Lady Chang Kyehyang, a woman from the aristocracy. This book contains more than 140 recipes and is one of the earliest cookbooks written in Korean, and the earliest known food text compiled by a woman in East Asia. Female Literacy and Authorship in 17th-century East Asia: A Study of Chang Kyehyang’s Ŭmsik Timibang looks at the cookbook from several angles: its language, its punctuation, and what the recipes reveal about where the knowledge came from. Some recipes may be original, while others may have been shared and passed around more widely. Maristella’s study also places the book in its historical setting to show what it tells us about life in Korea during a period of major social and cultural change, arguing that Lady Chang’s cookbook provides invaluable insights into women’s literacy, authorship, and the role women could play in society.

During her time at the CSMC Graduate School, Maristella also took part in several workshops and research events, most recently in the international workshop on ‘Textual Stability and Patterns of Variation in East Asian Manuscript Cultures’, which was co-organised by the École Pratique des Hautes Études–PSL (EPHE), the École française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO), the CSMC, National Taiwan University (NTU), and the Centre de recherche sur les civilisations de l’Asie orientale (CRCAO).