Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht

Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, best 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 and Zeppelin University.

Life and education

Born οn June 15, 1948 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 where he was also an assistant professor from 1971 to 1974. He had appointments at the universities of Bochum, Siegen, and has been at Stanford since 1989.

He is married with four children.

Work

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).

His 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" (Stanford University Press, 2003), "In Praise of Athletic Beauty" (Harvard Press, 2007).

Edited books include: (with K.L. Pfeiffer) Materialities of Communication (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), (with M. Brownlee) Cultural Authority in Golden Age Spain (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), (with David Palumbo-Liu) Streams of Cultural Capital (Stanford: Stanford Literature Review, Spring/Fall 1993; book version at Stanford University Press, 1997). (with F. Kittler/B. Siegert) Der Dichter als Kommandant. D'Annunzio erobert Fiume (Munich: Fink-Verlag, 1996), (with Ted Leland, Rick Schavone, Jeffrey Schnapp) The Athlete's Body (Stanford: Stanford Humanities Review 6.2, 1998), (with Michael Marrinan) Mapping Benjamin. The Work of Art in the Digital Age (Stanford: Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004).

Publications

• Eine Geschichte der spanischen Literatur (Suhrkamp, 1990) (= A History of Spanish Literature, 2 vols.)
• In 1926: Living at the Edge of Time (Harvard University Press, 1997)
• The Powers of Philology (University of Illinois Press, 2003)
• The Production of Presence: What Meaning Cannot Convey (Stanford University Press, 2004)
• In Praise of Athletic Beauty (Harvard University Press, 2006) (Trad. esp.: Elogio de la belleza atlética, Buenos Aires/Madrid, Katz editores, 2006, ISBN 9871283067 (paperback), ISBN 8460983579 (hardcover)).
• “Heidegger’s Two Totalitarianisms”. Telos 135 (Summer 2006). New York: Telos Press.
• "From Oedipal Hermeneutics to Philosophy of Presence". TELOS 138 (Spring 2007). New York: Telos Press
• Mente y materia. ¿Qué es la vida? Sobre la vigencia de Erwin Schrödinger (with Michael R. Hendrickson; Robert Pogue Harrison and Robert B. Laughlin), Buenos Aires/Madrid, Katz editores, 2010, ISBN 9788492946129.

Honors

• September 2010: honorary doctorate of Aarhus University, Denmark
• January 2009: honorary doctorate of the Phillips-Universität Marburg, Germany
• January 2009: honorary doctorate of the University of Lisbon, Portugal
• May 2008: honorary doctorate of the University of Greifswald, Germany
• May 2007: honorary doctorate of the Saint Petersburg State University, Russia
• May 2007: honorary doctorate of the University of Siegen, Germany
• May 2003: honorary doctorate of the Université de Montréal, Canada
• May 1998: honorary doctorate of the Universidad de Montevideo, Uruguay

External links

• Gumbrecht's homepage at www.stanford.edu
• The State of Public Philosophy Radio interview on Philosophy Talk
• Three one-hour radio interviews on Entitled Opinions with Robert P. Harrison about The Man Without Qualities, Athletic Beauty, and The Philosophy of Moods