Martin Kern is Professor of Chinese Literature at Princeton University. His work cuts across the fields of literature, religion, and art in ancient and medieval China, with a primary focus on classical poetry, poetics, and hermeneutics. He has studied the formation of ancient Chinese textuality and cultural memory and the role of texts in political and religious ritual. His current work explores the performance of poetry in the quest for self-cultivation and the cathartic experience and transformation of desire. He is co-editor of the preeminent Sinological journal T’oung Pao and a contributor to the Cambridge History of Chinese Literature. His recent monographs and edited volumes include The Stele Inscriptions of Ch’in Shih-huang (2000), Text and Ritual in Early China (2005), and Statecraft and Classical Learning: The Rituals of Zhou in East Asian History (2009, with Benjamin A. Elman). He has held fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Study, and the Mellon Foundation.
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