Fields of interest: Postcolonial, global and migration studies; human rights; digital humanities; global citizenship; global literary histories; community engagement; Hannah Arendt
David D. Kim is Associate Vice Provost at the International Institute, as well as Professor in the Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies. He works closely with Vice Provost Cindy Fan and other members of the Institute to support the university’s global engagement.
Professor Kim’s scholarly interests range from postcolonial, global, and migration studies and community engagement to human rights, cosmopolitanism, cultural and political theories, global literary histories, and digital humanities. His latest book is titled Arendt’s Solidarity (Stanford University Press, 2024). It tracks various manifestations of this vexing concept in the political theorist’s archival documents, publications, and recordings. His other monograph is
Cosmopolitan Parables (Northwestern University Press, 2017). It investigates how and why, in the post-Cold War world, German writers represent memories of colonialism, Nazism, and communism as cross-referential, cosmopolitan entanglements. His edited books include
Globalgeschichten der deutschen Literatur (Metzler Verlag, 2022; co-edited with Urs Büttner),
Reframing Postcolonial Studies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020),
The Postcolonial World (Routledge, 2016; co-edited with Jyotsna Singh),
Imagining Human Rights (De Gruyter, 2015; co-edited with Susanne Kaul), and
Georg Simmel in Translation (Cambridge Scholars, 2009). His peer-reviewed articles have recently appeared in The German Quarterly, Monatshefte, Gegenwartsliteratur, Journal of Translation Studies, and Jahrbuch der Deutschen Schillergesellschaft. For more information, please visit his departmental webpage.
Professor Kim is the recipient of distinguished research fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. A passionate teacher, he was awarded the UCLA Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award in 2020. During the summer, he leads the
Global Studies Program in The Hague, which examines the history and philosophy of human rights, the International Criminal Court, and the International Court of Justice. Having grown up in Venezuela, South Korea, Germany, the Netherlands, and Mexico, Professor Kim pursues reciprocal, community engaged research and teaching at translocal scales. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University.