John Namjun Kim

John Namjun Kim is an Associate Professor in the Department of German/Japanese/Comparative Literature at the University of California, Riverside. His research focuses on late 18th to 20th-century German and French literature/philosophy, 20th-century Japanese literature/philosophy, deconstruction, gender studies, digital media, translation theory, and writing technologies.

• Ph.D., Cornell University, 2004
• M.A., Cornell University, 2000
• B.A., University of California, Santa Cruz, 1996

His research interrogates intersections of language, power, and identity across cultural boundaries. Notable works include co-editing The Politics of Culture: Around the Work of Naoki Sakai (Routledge, 2010) and analyzing Yoko Tawada’s postcolonial narratives. Recent publications address German cosmopolitanism in Japanese imperialism, Foucaultian analyses of fear, and Kant’s performative irony.

Kim has conducted interdisciplinary translations (German/French/Japanese to English) of works by Tawada, Neyrat, and Wünsch. His scholarship bridges continental philosophy with East Asian studies, emphasizing critical theory and decolonial perspectives.