Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht
Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht
Albert Guérard Professor in Literature
Professor of French and Italian and Comparative Literature
Chair of Graduate Studies, Comparative Literature
Contact:
Building 260, Room 112
Phone: 650 723 2904
sepp@stanford.edu
Office Hours:
Contact Margaret Tompkins, tompkins@stanford.edu, 723-1356OVERVIEW:
Professor Gumbrecht holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Iberian and Latin American Cultures, and is affiliated with the Department of German Studies and the Program in Modern Thought and Literature. He is also Professeur Associé au Département de Littérature comparée at the Université de Montréal, Directeur d'études associé at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris), Professeur attaché au Collège de France, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
Projects
Post-World War II essay: a foundational moment in western intellectual history. At first glance (and this “first glance” has dominated historiography over the past half-century), the impression prevails that, from an intellectual point of view, the years after 1945 were much less incisive, much less of a “turn-around” than the years following World War I. There is, however, at least one intellectual “tone” (or “movement”) that seems to be uniquely related to the post-1945 era; and this is a new life-form of existentialism as a new “style of life.” A detailed description of this style of life, in its different national variations, will be the starting point for a historical reconstruction that will try to recover and re-evaluate the long-term influence (an “indirect” influence, perhaps) of the late 1940s on western intellectual history. Forthcoming from Stanford University Press 2011.
EDUCATION:
(including assistant professorships)
1974: Venia Legendi (Habilitation) Allgemeine und Romanische Literaturwissenschaft Universität Konstanz
1972: Universita degli studi di Pavia
1971-1974: Universität Konstanz
1971: Ph.D. Universität Konstanz
1970-1971: Universität München
1969-1970: Universidad de Salamanca
1969: Universität Regensburg
1967-1969: Universität München
1967: Abitur, Siebold Gymnasium Würzberg
1966: Lyceé Henri IV, Paris
1958-1967: Siebold Gymnasium Würzberg
News & Events
May 3, 2012
The DLCL is pleased to announce that Russell Berman, Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities,...
Oct 26, 2011
Oct 17, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht on:"How I Think (and Write) about What We Feel When We Read (...
Courses
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COMPLIT369Aut2011-12
Major texts of modern literary criticism in the context of professional scholarship today. Readings of critics such as Lukács, Auerbach, Frye, Ong, Benjamin, Adorno, Szondi, de Man, Abrams, Bourdieu, Vendler, and Said. Contemporary professional issues including scholarly associations, journals, national and comparative literatures, university structures, and career paths.
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FRENGEN237Win2011-12
A comprehensive and yet focused introduction to the work and life of the French 18th-century philosophe who undoubtedly had the strongest impact on posterity (occasionally comparing Rousseau with two other key-figures of French Enlightenment, Voltaire and Denis Diderot). Special attention will be paid to Rousseau's reception history, both as the inventor of new concepts and discourses (e.g. "vertu persécutée") that have shaped our understanding of social life up until the present day, and on a new type of "sensibilité" mainly based on the capacity of compassion (pitié). This seminar, in its concluding sessions, will explore aspects of an aesthetic and political genealogy of our time.
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COMPLIT359AAut2011-12
Discussion of one contemporary or historical text from the Western philosophical tradition per quarter in a group of faculty and graduate students. For admission of new participants, a conversation with H. U. Gumbrecht is required. May be repeated for credit.
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FRENGEN395Aut2010-11
Discussion of one contemporary or historical text from the Western philosophical tradition per quarter in a group of faculty and graduate students. For admission of new participants a conversation with H. U. Gumbrecht is required. May be repeated for credit.
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ITALGEN395Aut2010-11
Discussion of one contemporary or historical text from the Western philosophical tradition per quarter in a group of faculty and graduate students. For admission of new participants a conversation with H. U. Gumbrecht is required. May be repeated for credit.
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FRENGEN260Win2010-11
A textual look at one of the figures that invented embodied and operated -- in their roles as intense agents of communication -- the European Enlightenment. Voltaire will be seen above all from the angle of his correspondence which despite its seemingly personal nature was mostly written for large groups or (often) paying readers looking for both instruction and entertainment.
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FRENGEN395Win2010-11
Discussion of one contemporary or historical text from the Western philosophical tradition per quarter in a group of faculty and graduate students. For admission of new participants a conversation with H. U. Gumbrecht is required. May be repeated for credit.
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ITALGEN395Win2010-11
Discussion of one contemporary or historical text from the Western philosophical tradition per quarter in a group of faculty and graduate students. For admission of new participants a conversation with H. U. Gumbrecht is required. May be repeated for credit.
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ILAC229Win2010-11
First published in 1962 'Tiempo de Silencio' is the only book that the young psychiatrist Luis Martin Santos finished during his lifetime and although largely overlooked (even in Spain) until the present day one of the great European novels of the 20th century. It brings to a complex convergence the evocation of Spain's decadent and run-down post-Civil War society with high-modernist literary procedures and (an implicit parody of) phenomenological analysis.
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COMPLIT252Aut2010-11
An innovative perspective on the question about the "ontology of Literature," a perspective that abandons the paradigm of representation (i.e. that language can or cannot refer to, and thereby represent, the material world), that will rather explore ways in which literary texts provide for their readers the impression that they are surrounded by and wrapped in a material world that touches them in the lightest possible ways. Like a voice (German "Stimme"), literary texts can make us feel that we are part of the world, of it's objects and of its bodies.
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COMPLIT395Aut2010-11
Discussion of one contemporary or historical text from the Western philosophical tradition per quarter in a group of faculty and graduate students. For admission of new participants a conversation with H. U. Gumbrecht is required. May be repeated for credit.
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COMPLIT218Win2010-11
First published in 1962, "Tiempo de Silencio" is the only book that the young psychiatrist Luis Martin Santos finished during his lifetime, and, although largely overlooked (even in Spain) until the present day, one of the great European novels of the 20th century. It brings to a complex convergence the evocation of Spain's decadent and run-down post-Civil War society with high-modernist literary procedures and (an implicit parody of) phenomenological analysis.
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COMPLIT121Aut2010-11
What is poetry? How does it speak to us in many voices? Why does it matter? The course introduces poetry as a genre as an experience as a field in literary studies and as an indispensable part of an educated person's world-view. The readings address poetry of several cultures in comparison with some attention to the poetry of the English-speaking world. Moreover the course develops a conversation between standpoints: convention and experiment the historical past and the present old and new worlds and many more. World poetry I believe is not a stable canon of texts or an abstraction but such a wide-ranging conversation. And poetry in English is not an isolated event but an important part of that conversation. One of the goals of the course is to convey a basic knowledge of how poetry works how it has been read in different times and places how it has changed over time and how a familiarity with poetics can contribute to your experience of a poem. No familiarity with poetry is necessary only the will to think about particular poems and poetry in general. The final aim of the course is to capture the reflection on worlds and their making that is important to world poetry. What is a world in poetry? How does poetry describe and explain worlds to one another? In answering questions like these we account for some of poetry's force as an intellectual and ethical practice and make contact with an understanding long established across many cultures: that poetry tells us things no other kind of writing can tell us about not only ourselves but our existence in society culture and the world. Readings include: medieval to modern poetry of western Europe and the Americas; contemporary poetry of Europe Latin America Africa and the U.S.; and present-day experimental digital sound and visual poetry. Syllabus available at syllabus.stanford.edu GER:DB-Hum
