Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht

Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht (b. 1948), also known as “Sepp” Gumbrecht, is a German-born American literary theorist and currently the Albert Guérard Professor on Literature in the Departments of Comparative Literature, French and Italian, German, and Spanish and Portuguese at Stanford University.

Born in Würzburg, Germany, Gumbrecht received his education in Paris, Munich, Regensburg, Salamanca, Pavia and Konstanz, receiving his Ph.D. at the University of Konstanz in 1971. He has had appointments at the universities of Bochum and Siegen, and has been at Stanford since 1989.

Gumbrecht’s main areas of research, teaching, and publishing are European literatures of the Middle Ages and of the late 18th and 19th centuries; history and pragmatics of communication media; epistemology of everyday culture; and, more recently, the aesthetics of sports.

His publications are extensive and in many languages, through principally in German (in the first half of his career) and in English (since moving to the U.S. in 1989).

Gumbrecht’s principal books are ‘Making Sense in Life and Literature’ (University of Minnesota Press, 1989) ‘In 1926’ (Harvard, 1998) ‘The Powers of Philology: Dynamics of Textual Scholarship’ (University of Illinois Press, 2003), ‘Production of Presence’ (Harvard Press, 2003), and “In Praise of Athletic Beauty” (Harvard Press, 2007).