Tae-Yeoun Keum is an assistant professor in political theory at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research concerns the symbolic dimensions of politics: to what extent can and should politics be shaped by figurative elements in our thinking - such as symbols, metaphors, and narratives - that are not immediately transparent to reason? Her first book, "Plato and the Mythic Tradition in Political Thought" (Harvard University Press, 2020), explored this question through the lens of Plato's myths and their reception in modern political thought. The project she will be working on at UCHV is provisionally titled "The Symbolic Politics of Blumenberg, Habermas, and Schmitt." It will place the work of Hans Blumenberg, the twentieth-century philosopher of myth and metaphor, in dialogue with those of his contemporaries.