Fritz Gutbrodt is Managing Director in the Chairman's Office of Swiss Re, a reinsurance company which he joined in 1996 and where, from 1999 to 2007, he was Head of the Swiss Re Centre for Global Dialogue, a forum for stakeholder dialogue and the venue of the firm's leadership programs. From 2007 to 2011 he worked for Credit Suisse Group, where he served as Director of the Credit Suisse Foundation. From 1992 to 1996 he was Rektor of the Hochalpines Institut/Institut otalpin Ftan, a school in the Engadine where he was subsequently appointed as Board member and then President until 2003.

He received an M.A. in German and a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Zurich, where he also completed his Habilitation in English and Comparative Literature. After four years as Research Assistant at the English Department in Zurich he was Visiting Scholar at Cornell University and, from 1989 to 1994, Assistant Professor at the John Hopkins University. From 2004 to 2009 he was an Associate Fellow at the Collegium Helveticum, a trans-disciplinary research group sponsored by the ETH and the University of Zurich.

His recent teaching focused on utopian worlds, children in literature, and literary animals. He is currently working on a research project about the history of the “passions” in rhetoric and literature in their relation to a modern science of emotions.

Books:

Joint Ventures: Authorship, Translation, Plagiarism (Bern and New York: Peter Lang, 2003).

Fragmentation by Decree: Coleridge and the Text of Romanticism (Zürich: Zentralstelle der Studentenschaft, 1990)

Selected Articles:

"Miltons Monster, romantisiert," in Paul Michel, ed. Spinnenfuß und Krötenbauch: Genese und Symbolik von Kompositwesen (Zurich: Pano, 2013), 317-29.

"'O True Apothecary! Thy Drugs Are Quick': Shakespeares Drogen," in: Elvan Kut and Martin Schmid, eds. Heilen - Gesunden: Das andere Arzneibuch (Zurich: Edition Collegium Helveticum, 2013), 37-41.

"Pygmalion: Von der Ästhetik als Modellierung der Gefühle“, in Johannes Fehr and Gerd Folkers, eds. Gefühle zeigen. Manifestationsformen emotionaler Prozesse (Zürich: Chronos, 2009), 215-42.

"Zwischen Ach und Ich: Kleists Alkmene als Übersetzerin“, in Aris Fioretos, ed. Babel. Für Werner Hamacher (Basel: Urs Engeler Editor, 2009), 218-25.

“Wenig Science, viel Fiction: James Whales Frankenstein (1931)“, in Rainer Egloff, Gerd Folkers und Matthias Michel, ed. Archäologie der Zukunft (Zürich: Chronos, 2007), 344-46.

„Taking Individualism at Face Value: Johann Caspar Lavater’s Physiognomische Fragmente”, in: David E. Wellbery et al., eds. A New History of German Literature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005), 393-399.

„‘Quam cernis, imaginis umbra est‘/‘Was Du siehst, ist ein Schatten des Bildes‘: Spiegel und Schatten im Mythos des Narziss,“ in Paul Michel, ed. Präsenz ohne Substanz: Beiträge zur Symbolik des Spiegels (Zürich: Pano Verlag, 2003), 181-197.

„Physiognomik, Predigt, Okkultismus: Lavater und die Medien der Kommunikation im 18. Jahrhundert,“ in Ulrich Stadler and Karl Pestalozzi, ed. Im Licht Lavaters (Zürich: Verlag der NZZ, 2003), 117-140.

"The Genius as Compositor: Young’s Conjectures on Original Composition and the Imprimatur of Romanticism," in Imprints & Revisions: The Making of the Literary Text, 1759-1818, ed. Peter Hughes and Robert Rehder (Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1996), 15-37.

"The Worth of Werther: Goethe’s Literary Marketing," Modern Language Notes 110 (1995): 579-630.

"Dichtung. England: Mittelalter; Neuzeit," in Historisches Sachwörterbuch der Rhetorik, ed. Gert Ueding (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1994), II: 727-736.

"Poedelaire: Translation and the Volatility of the Letter," Diacritics 22 (1992): 49-68.

"Wahl:Verwandtschaft. Benjamins Siegel," Modern Language Notes 106 (1991): 555-588.

"‘Misplaced ornaments’: Romantische Figurationen der Rhetorik bei Wordsworth," in Rhetorik zwischen den Wissenschaften, ed. Gert Ueding (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1991), 175-186.

"‘Endnessnessessity’: Zufall des Endes bei Sterne und Joyce," in Die Kunst zu enden, ed. Jürgen Söring (Bern: Peter Lang, 1990), 79-109.