Hans Ulrich "Sepp" Gumbrecht (born 15 June 1948) is a literary theorist whose work spans philology, philosophy, semiotics, literary and cultural history, and epistemologies of the everyday. As of June 14, 2018, he is Albert Guérard Professor Emeritus in Literature at Stanford University. Since 1989, he held the Albert Guérard Chair as Professor in the Departments of Comparative Literature and French and Italian in Stanford's Division of Literatures, Languages, and Cultures. By courtesy, he was also affiliated with the Departments of German Studies, Iberian and Latin American Cultures, and the Program in Modern Thought and Literature. Since retirement, he continues to be a Catedratico Visitante Permanente at the University of Lisbon and became a Presidential Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2020. Gumbrecht's writing on philosophy and modern thought extends from the Middle Ages to today and incorporates an array of disciplines and styles, at times combining historical and philosophical inquiry with elements of memoir. Much of Gumbrecht's scholarship has focused on national literatures in French, Spanish, Portuguese, and German, and he is known for his work on the Western philosophical tradition, the materiality of presence, shifting views of the Enlightenment, forms of aesthetic experience, and the joys of watching sports. As well as publishing academic works and teaching graduate and undergraduate students at Stanford, Gumbrecht is recognized as a public intellectual in Europe and South America and contributes to a range of newspapers and journals in English, German, Portuguese, and Spanish. Life and education Born on June 15, 1948, in Würzburg, Germany, Gumbrecht graduated from the Siebold Gymnasium of his hometown in 1967, also having studied at Lycée Henri IV in Paris. He specialized in Romance Philology and German Literature, but also studied philosophy and sociology during his university years, which took him to Munich, Regensburg, Salamanca, Pavia, and Konstanz. After receiving his Ph.D. at the University of Konstanz in 1971, he became assistant professor, acquiring the Venia legendi (Habilitation) in Romance Literatures and Literary Theory in 1974. Gumbrecht was a Full Professor at the University of Bochum from 1975 to 1982, and from 1983 to 1989 at the University Siegen, where he founded the first Humanities Graduate Program in Germany, which was dedicated to the topic "Forms of Communication as Forms of Life." From 1983 to 1985, Gumbrecht was Vice President of the German Association of Romance Philology. Having been offered the Albert Guérard Chair at