Martin Kern
Martin Kern is the Joanna and Greg ’84 P13 P18 Zeluck Professor in Asian Studies. He also serves as co-editor of T’oung Pao, is a member of the American Philosophical Society and the president of the American Oriental Society (2023–2024). At Princeton, Kern directed the university-wide collaboration “Comparative Antiquity: A Humanities Council Global Initiative” (2018–2022); he also co-directs the Princeton-Venice Summer School in Classical Chinese and Classical Japanese/Kanbun. At Renmin University of China (Beijing), he directs the “International Center for the Study of Ancient Text Cultures,” a center committed to the global study of antiquity in comparative contexts. Kern’s numerous publications address topics across all genres of ancient Chinese literature, including poetry as cultural memory and as performance in political and religious ritual; authorship in poetry, philosophy, and historiography; writing and orality; methodological issues in manuscript studies; the history and early formation of Chinese poetry, including in the light of recently discovered manuscripts; early literary thought; style and rhetoric in philosophy and historiography; and various others more.
Education
- Ph.D. in Sinology, Cologne University (Germany)
- M.A. in Sinology, Cologne University (Germany)
Selected Publications
Forthcoming
- Qu Yuan and the Chuci: New Approaches, co-edited with Stephen Owen. Leiden: Brill, forthcoming 2023.
- Zuozhuan and Early Chinese Historiography, co-edited with Yuri Pines and Nino Luraghi. Leiden: Brill, forthcoming 2023.
- “Reconstructing Qu Yuan.” In Qu Yuan and the Chuci: New Approaches. Leiden: Brill, forthcoming 2023.
- “Poetry Quotation, Commentary, and the Ritual Order: Staging the Noble Man in Zuozhuan.” In Zuozhuan and Early Chinese Historiography. Leiden: Brill, forthcoming 2023.
2023
- “The Shijing (Classic of Poetry; Book of Odes).” In Oxford Bibliographies in Chinese Studies, ed. Tim Wright. New York: Oxford University Press, 2023 (DOI 10.1093/OBO/9780199920082-0203).
- Biaoyan yu chanshi: Zaoqi Zhongguo shixue yanjiu 表演與闡釋：早期中國詩學研究 [Performance and Interpretation: Studies in Early Chinese Poetics]. Beijing: Sanlian Publishers, 2023.
2018
- Confucius and the Analects Revisited: New Perspectives on Dating, Composition, and Authorship, ed. Michael Hunter and Martin Kern. Leiden: Brill, 2018.
2017
- Origins of Chinese Political Philosophy: Studies in the Composition and Thought of the Shangshu (Classic of Documents), ed. Martin Kern and Dirk Meyer. Leiden: Brill, 2017.
2016
- Shiji xue yu shijie hanxue lunji xubian 史記學與世界漢學論集續編 [Essays in Shiji Studies and World Sinology, Second Series], ed. Martin Kern and Lee Chi-hsiang 李紀祥. Taipei: Tangshan chubanshe/Tonsan Publications, 2016.
2015
- Qin Shihuang shike: zaoqi Zhongguo de wenben yu yishi 秦始皇石刻：早期中國帝國表現中的文本與儀式 [Chinese translation of The Stele Inscriptions of Ch’in Shih-huang: Text and Ritual in Early Chinese Political Representation]. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2015.
- Ideology of Power and Power of Ideology in Early China, ed. Yuri Pines, Paul Rakita Goldin, and Martin Kern. Leiden: Brill, 2015.
