Martin Kern 柯馬丁

Joanna and Greg '84 P13 P18 Zeluck Professor of Asian Studies
Department of East Asian Studies der Princeton University

Short BiographyMartin Kern is Joanna and Greg '84 P13 P18 Zeluck Professor of Asian Studies at the Department of East Asian Studies at Princeton University. He is also a co-editor of the journal T'oung Pao and heads the university-wide project "Comparative Antiquity: A Humanities Council Global Initiative" at Princeton. At Renmin University (Beijing) he is Xin'ao Distinguished Visiting Chair in the Humanities and Director of the "International Center for the Study of Ancient Text Cultures". Martin Kern's research focuses on the origins of Chinese poetry, the expressions of early Chinese rhetoric in philosophy, politics, and literature, and the development of the intellectual and social system of ancient Chinese textuality. He also works on the theory, aesthetics, and hermeneutical practices of early Chinese poetry, with special focus on the early history of the Shijing and the Chuci.

Selected Publications

  • Hunter, Michael and Martin Kern (Eds.). Confucius and the Analects Revisited: New Perspectives on Dating, Composition, and Authorship. Leiden: Brill, 2018.
  • Kern, Martin and Dirk Meyer (Eds.). Origins of Chinese Political Philosophy: Studies in the Composition and Thought of the Shangshu (Classic of Documents). Leiden: Brill, 2017.
  • Pines, Yuri, Paul Rakita Goldin and Martin Kern (Eds.). Ideology of Power and Power of Ideology in Early China. Leiden: Brill, 2015.
  • Kern, Martin. „Early Chinese Literature, Beginnings through Western Han.“ In: Cambridge History of Chinese Literature. Ed. by Stephen Owen and Kang-i Sun Chang. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, 1-115.
  • Kern, Martin (Ed.). Text and Ritual in Early China. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005.
  • Kern, Martin. The Stele Inscriptions of Ch’in Shih-huang: Text and Ritual in Early Chinese Imperial Representation. New Haven: American Oriental Society, 2000.