Joachim Küpper (born 1952) is a professor of

romance studies Romance studies or Romance philology (; ; ; ; ; ; ) is an academic discipline that covers the study of the languages, literatures, and cultures of areas that speak Romance languages. Romance studies departments usually include the study of Spa ...

and

comparative literature Comparative literature studies is an academic field dealing with the study of literature and cultural expression across language, linguistic, national, geographic, and discipline, disciplinary boundaries. Comparative literature "performs a role ...

at the

Freie Universität Berlin The Free University of Berlin (, often abbreviated as FU Berlin or simply FU) is a public university, public research university in Berlin, Germany. It was founded in West Berlin in 1948 with American support during the early Cold War period a ...

. Küpper has published on authors from various periods, including

Homer Homer (; , ; possibly born ) was an Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Despite doubts about his autho ...

Dante Dante Alighieri (; most likely baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri; – September 14, 1321), widely known mononymously as Dante, was an Italian Italian poetry, poet, writer, and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called ...

Petrarch Francis Petrarch (; 20 July 1304 – 19 July 1374; ; modern ), born Francesco di Petracco, was a scholar from Arezzo and poet of the early Italian Renaissance, as well as one of the earliest Renaissance humanism, humanists. Petrarch's redis ...

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...

Francisco de Quevedo Francisco Gómez de Quevedo y Santibáñez Villegas, Order of Santiago, Knight of the Order of Santiago (; 14 September 1580 – 8 September 1645) was a Spanish nobleman, politician and writer of the Baroque era. Along with his lifelong rival, ...

Pedro Calderón de la Barca Pedro Calderón de la Barca y Barreda González de Henao Ruiz de Blasco y Riaño (17 January 160025 May 1681) (, ; ) was a Spanish dramatist, poet, and writer. He is known as one of the most distinguished Spanish Baroque literature, poets and ...

Lope de Vega Félix Lope de Vega y Carpio (; 25 November 156227 August 1635) was a Spanish playwright, poet, and novelist who was a key figure in the Spanish Golden Age (1492–1659) of Spanish Baroque literature, Baroque literature. In the literature of ...

Alessandro Manzoni Alessandro Francesco Tommaso Antonio Manzoni (, , ; 7 March 1785 – 22 May 1873) was an Italian poet, novelist and philosopher. He is famous for the novel ''The Betrothed (Manzoni novel), The Betrothed'' (orig. ) (1827), generally ranked among ...

, Balzac,

Flaubert Gustave Flaubert ( , ; ; 12 December 1821 – 8 May 1880) was a French novelist. He has been considered the leading exponent of literary realism in his country and abroad. According to the literary theorist Kornelije Kvas, "in Flaubert, realis ...

Theodor Fontane Theodor Fontane (; 30 December 1819 – 20 September 1898) was a German novelist and poet, regarded by many as the most important 19th-century German-language Literary realism, realist author. He published the first of his novels, for which he i ...

, and

Alain Robbe-Grillet Alain Robbe-Grillet (; 18 August 1922 – 18 February 2008) was a French writer and filmmaker. He was one of the figures most associated with the ''Nouveau Roman'' () trend of the 1960s, along with Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and Claude Simo ...

. In addition, he works on problems of literary theory and intellectual history. He is the author of eight monographs and approximately 100 articles, as well as the editor of numerous volumes and scholarly journals.

Career

After studying romance literatures and history in

Bochum Bochum (, ; ; ; ) is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia. With a population of 372,348 (April 2023), it is the sixth-largest city (after Cologne, Düsseldorf, Dortmund, Essen and Duisburg) in North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous German federa ...

Toulouse Toulouse (, ; ; ) is a city in southern France, the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Haute-Garonne department and of the Occitania (administrative region), Occitania region. The city is on the banks of the Garonne, River Garonne, from ...

and

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

, Küpper began working as assistant professor at the Institute for Romance Philology of the

Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich, LMU or LMU Munich; ) is a public university, public research university in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. Originally established as the University of Ingolstadt in 1472 by Duke ...

in 1977. Following upon his doctoral dissertation (1980) and his habilitation (1987), he became a full professor of romance studies at the

University of Wuppertal The University of Wuppertal (''Universität Wuppertal'') is a German scientific institution located in Wuppertal in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The university's official name in German is ''Bergische Universität Wuppertal'' ...

in 1989. In 2009 he switched to the

, where he has since been employed as professor of romance studies and comparative literature, having declined offers from numerous other universities in Germany such as the universities of

Tübingen Tübingen (; ) is a traditional college town, university city in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated south of the state capital, Stuttgart, and developed on both sides of the Neckar and Ammer (Neckar), Ammer rivers. about one in ...

Bonn Bonn () is a federal city in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, located on the banks of the Rhine. With a population exceeding 300,000, it lies about south-southeast of Cologne, in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr region. This ...

and

Cologne Cologne ( ; ; ) is the largest city of the States of Germany, German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city pr ...

. In 1987, Küpper was awarded the

Heinz Maier-Leibnitz-Preis The Heinz Maier-Leibnitz-Preis (Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize), in honor and memory of the German physicist Heinz Maier-Leibnitz, is funded by the ''Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung'' (BMBF, German Ministry of Education and Research), and ...

, and in 2001 the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize. In 2007, he established the first center for the humanities in Germany, the Dahlem Humanities Center, at the

. From 2010 to 2016, Küpper acted as principal researcher of an Advanced Grant Project under the auspices of the

European Research Council The European Research Council (ERC) is a public body for funding of scientific and technological research conducted within the European Union (EU). Established by the European Commission in 2007, the ERC is composed of an independent Scientific ...

(ERC). The project was dedicated to the development of a “network theory” of culture. The monograph resulting from the project, written by Küpper, was published in 2018 as ''The Cultural Net''. Küpper has lectured at universities worldwide, including

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...

, the

Chinese University of Hong Kong The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) is a public university, public research university in Sha Tin, New Territories, Hong Kong. Established in 1963 as a federation of three university college, collegesChung Chi College, New Asia Coll ...

, the National Research University HSE in Moscow, and the

Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; ) is an Israeli public university, public research university based in Jerusalem. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Chaim Weizmann in July 1918, the public university officially opened on 1 April 1925. ...

. For many years, he was a visiting associate professor at

Johns Hopkins University The Johns Hopkins University (often abbreviated as Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1876 based on the European research institution model, J ...

in Baltimore, as well as a ''Directeur de recherche invité'' at the

École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales The School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (, EHESS) is a graduate ''grande école'' and '' grand établissement'' in Paris focused on academic research in the social sciences. The school awards Master and PhD degrees alone and conj ...

(EHESS) in Paris. Küpper is a member of the

Göttingen Academy of Sciences Göttingen (, ; ; ) is a university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the capital of the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. According to the 2022 German census, the population of Göttingen was 124,548. Overview The ...

, the

North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts The North Rhine-Westphalia Academy for Sciences, Humanities and the Arts (''Nordrhein-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Künste''), shortly known as NRW is a learned society in Düsseldorf, North Rhine-Westphalia. With more than 28 ...

, the German National Academy (Leopoldina), and the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

References

External links

Index
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Living people 1952 births Literary theorists Academic staff of the Free University of Berlin Members of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina European Research Council grantees {{Germany-academic-bio-stub