Photo by Soomin Ham

Chang-su Cho Houchins’ immersion into Asian history was cultivated early on while attaining her college degree in Japan. After migrating to the United States in 1948 and graduating from the University of Washington in Seattle, she embarked on the ambitious task of conducting extensive research and course work in classical and medieval Japanese literature and modern Chinese literature at the University of California at Berkeley. She advanced her Asian cultural studies and continued performing research in Anthropology at both George Washington University and American University in Washington, D.C.

In 1965 she began working at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History as a Museum Specialist in Asian Ethnology. She has since developed a reputation for being an authority in her field, publishing a number of articles on Asian culture in several prominent journals and presiding as researcher and exhibit coordinator for numerous Smithsonian Institution exhibitions. In addition, she has served as language instructor at the Defense Language Institute in California; American University and Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.; as well as at the American Embassy in Seoul, Korea.

Chang-su Cho Houchins continues to work with the Smithsonian in the Asian Cultural History Program in the Department of Anthropology as an expert specialist in East Asian Ethnology and is a member of The Senate of Scientists, National Museum of Natural History.

Other works by Chang-su Cho Houchins