Prof. Dr. Günter Leypoldt

Günter Leypoldt is Professor of American Literature and Culture at the University of Heidelberg, with joint appointments at the English Department and the Heidelberg Center for American Studies. He is (co)speaker of the Research Training Group “Authority and Trust in US Culture and Society” (Grako 2244), and founding member of the collaborative research center “Heimat(en)/Homes: Phenomena, Practices, Representations” (SFB 1671). His present research interests include transatlantic Anglophone literature from 1800 to the present, cultural theory, book and media history, cultural memory, value theory, and the cultural sociology of aesthetic experience, literary institutions, and knowledge production. His most recent book —  (NY: Oxford University Press, 2025)—proposes a new value theory and sketches shifts in literary production and reception networks from the 1800s to the present. As co-editor of  (Bielefeld: transcript 2021), he takes an interdisciplinary and historical look at how shifting relations between authority and trust have been crucial to the loss of legitimacy experienced by political, social, and cultural institutions not only in the United States but in Western democracies at large. Leypoldt’s scholarly articles can be found in such journals as American Journal of Cultural Sociology, American Literary History, Poetics, Modern Language Quarterly, New Literary History, Critical Quarterly, Contemporary Literature, and Post45.