The Princeton Club of Western Washington is pleased to announce that Professor Martin Kern will be our 2016 faculty speaker.  He will be speaking on the evening of Wednesday, March 30th about “Princeton’s Treasure of Chinese Calligraphy: A Letter by Wang Xizhi (303-361) and its Paradoxes”.

You must RSVP by March 24th to attend this event.  See below for details.

Martin Kern is the inaugural Greg (’84) and Joanna (P13) Zeluck Professor in Asian Studies at Princeton University. Born and educated in Germany, he received his Ph.D. in Sinology, German Literature, and Art History from Cologne University in 1996. He taught at the University of Washington and Columbia University before moving to Princeton in 2000. He also serves as Distinguished Professor at the Research Center for Comparative Literature and World Literature, Shanghai Normal University. In 2015, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society.

Kern’s research cuts broadly across the fields of literature, philology, history, religion, and art in ancient and medieval China, with a dual focus on poetry and the formation of ancient Chinese textuality and cultural memory. The author and editor of nine books and some eighty book chapters and articles, he studies the composition, reception, and canonization of early Chinese texts, including through the analysis of recently excavated manuscripts and from comparative perspectives. He publishes on a wide range of topics, including the history of Chinese literature; the performance of texts in political and religious ritual; authorship as a historical and theoretical problem; issues of writing and orality; the early development of Chinese literary thought; style and rhetoric in philosophy and historiography; the origins of Chinese political philosophy; medieval calligraphy; and the history and current issues of Sinology as a global field. He is currently completing the monograph Texts, Authors, and Performance in Early China: The Origins and Early Development of the Literary Tradition (Princeton University Press).

When:  Wednesday, March 30^th

-        Doors open at 6:00 pm for a casual reception.  Please enter through the main entrance at the front of the building.

-        Talk begins at 7:00 pm.  (please be seated by this time; no admittance into the building after 7 pm)

Light appetizers and drinks will be provided during the reception.

Where:  Microsoft Building 27 Room 1810

3009 157th Place NE
Redmond, WA

Please enter through the front of the building.

Registration information:  Please RSVP by Thursday, March 24^th to [email protected] with:

-        Name and class affiliation

-        Guest names

RSVPs must be accompanied by payment of $40 for each guest.  If complete payment is not received by Thursday, March 24 we will be unable to hold your RSVP, as payment cannot be accepted at the event.

Please submit payment by navigating to http://princetonww.org and on the "Membership" tab, clicking on the yellow DONATE button (please specify whether you are paying annual dues, event fees, or both). Dues information can be found on the "Membership" tab as well.

Note:  Due to the nature of the secure facility, we are unable to accept any RSVPs after March 24^th.  We are also unable to provide refunds in case of RSVP cancellation due to upfront facilities and catering fees