Simon Kow

Simon Kow teaches social and political topics in the Early Modern Studies Programme. He grew up in Britain and Calgary, before moving to Ottawa to take his BA in political science. Dr. Kow received both his MA and PhD in political science at the University of Toronto, in 1996 and 2001, respectively. In 2001 Dr. Kow began teaching at the University of King's College as assistant professor in the Early Modern Studies Programme.

Current research projects

Dr. Kow is writing on Enlightenment conceptions of China.

Selected publications

• "Enlightenment Universalism? Bayle and Montesquieu on China." The European Legacy (forthcoming).
• “Politics and Culture in Hume’s History of England”. In Companion to Enlightenment Historiography, ed. Sophie Bourgault and Robert Sparling, Brill Press, 2013:61-99.
• "Confucianism, Secularism, and Atheism in Bayle and Montesquieu." The European Legacy 16:1 (2011): 39-52.
• Rousseau and Desire, Co-edited volume with Mark Blackell and John Duncan, University of Toronto Press (2009).
• "Rousseau's Mandevillean Conception of Desire and Modern Society."  In Rousseau and Desire, 62-81.
• "Necessitating Justice: Hobbes on Free Will and Punishment." The European Legacy 10:7 (December 2005), 689-702.
• "Corporeal Interiority and the Body Politic in Hobbes's Leviathan." Dalhousie Review 85.2 (Summer 2005), 239-248.
• "Hobbes's Critique of Miltonian Independency." Animus (2004): 37-51.
• "Maistre and Hobbes on Providential History and the English Civil War." Clio 30:3 (2001): 267-288.

Interests:

Early modern political thought, history of political thought, early modern conceptions of China, political themes in early modern literature, early modern piracy, Chinese and Japanese cinema