Gerald L. Bruns is the William P. and Hazel B. White Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Notre Dame. A prolific author, his works include Modern Poetry and the Idea of Language, Inventions: Writing, Textuality, and Understanding in Literary History, Hermeneutics Ancient and Modern, Tragic Thoughts at the End of Philosophy: Language, Literature, and Ethical Theory, The Material of Poetry: Sketches for a Philosophical Poetics, On the Anarchy of Poetry and Philosophy, and On Ceasing to Be Human. In 1974 and again in 1985 he received Guggenheim fellowships and has been a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1985–1986), the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford (1993–1994), and the Stanford Humanities Center (2007–2008). In 2008 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.