Professor Michael C. Kalton received his Ph.D. in Comparative Religion and East Asian Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University in 1977. He is well known both in Korea and the West for his pioneering work on Korean Neo-Confucianism and particularly for his studies of the philosophy of T’oegye Yi Hwang (1501–1570). He is the author of To Become a Sage: The Ten Diagrams on Sage Learning by Yi T’oegye (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988) and the co-author of The Four-Seven Debate: An Annotated Translation of the Most Famous Controversy in Korean Neo-Confucian Thought, (New York: SUNY Press, 1994). He is currently Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington, Tacoma, where he teaches courses on East Asian thought and environmental ethics. Professor Kalton very kindly gave this interview to Acta Koreana on the occasion of the Third Keimyung International Conference on Korean Studies (KICKS 2007): Translating Korean Classical Materials Abroad: The Current State and the Tasks Ahead.
