Martin Kern specializes in the study of Chinese antiquity, with a focus on early Chinese poetry. Working across the disciplines of literature, philology, history, religion, and art, he is particularly interested in the practices of textual composition, transmission, and hermeneutics in the Chinese manuscript culture of the first millennium BCE. His current book projects include Performance, Memory, and Authorship in Ancient China: The Formation of the Poetic Tradition and The Shijing (Classic of Poetry) in Ancient Manuscripts: Studies in Poetry, Poetics, and the Sociology of Text. In addition, he serves as co-editor of Philological Practices: A Comparative Historical Lexicon (forthcoming, Princeton University Press). At Princeton, he directs "Comparative Antiquity: A Humanities Council Global Initiative"; at Renmin University of China (Beijing), he leads the "International Center for the Study of Ancient Text Cultures."