Taran Kang

Taran Kang is an Associate Professor of History at the National University of Singapore. He received his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Alberta and his Ph.D. from Cornell University.

Prof. Kang specializes in modern European intellectual history. His research seeks to bring a global perspective to the history of ideas with an attentiveness to Europe’s position in relation to other parts of the world. He has a particular interest in the formation of modern historical thought and the history of morals. His work, which has appeared in such venues as the Journal of the History of Ideas and the German Studies Review, operates at the intersections of history, philosophy, and literature. His book Transgression and the Aesthetics of Evil (University of Toronto Press, 2022) explores the historical entanglement of moral and aesthetic categories.

Prior to joining the Department of History at NUS, Prof. Kang taught at Yale-NUS College for more than a decade. He has taught courses on a wide range of topics, including the problem of evil, modern historiography, the Scientific Revolution, and the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.