Martin Kern’s new book, “Writing and Community in 300 BCE China” (May 2026), is the first study to examine the anthology of the canonical “Poems (詩)” within its interpretive community at the ancient capital of the state of Chu. Based on the archaeological data of excavated tombs and the material, visual, and textual analysis of their recovered bamboo manuscripts, this study identifies the “Poems” and other literary texts as the teaching tools of a class of low-ranking intellectuals who served the Chu royal court. It reconstructs the social context of early Chinese manuscript culture as well as the procedures of writing, reading, teaching, and learning at the only preimperial Chinese site that has yielded large collections of literary writings. Kern’s richly illustrated lecture introduces the principal points of his interdisciplinary analysis.
Martin Kern is the Joanna and Greg Zeluck ’84 P13 P18 Professor in Asian Studies. At Princeton, Kern directed the university-wide collaboration “Comparative Antiquity: A Humanities Council Global Initiative” (2018–2022); since 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.
The lecture is sponsored by the Liu Institute's East Asia Working Group.