Tae Hyun Kim studies the philosophy, politics, and history of the beginnings of Chinese civilization, through imaginative readings of excavated and transmitted texts and artifacts. He is interested in multiple ways of constructing the past; their relationship to the formation of the classics and the commentaries, and authoritative history texts, and their uses in the early Chinese sociopolitical context. He has published and presented his papers on the textual formation and philosophy of Laozi, Zhuangzi, and the Analects in journals, books, and conferences. Tae Hyun also studies modern European philosophy at UC Berkeley, focusing in critical discussions of the philosophy of history and epistemology in the German and French traditions, which he believes will help him find new approaches to questions of the idea of the past in early Chinese historiography and philosophy.