Rüdiger Campe

Campe's research explores the interconnections of literature, aesthetics, and science. In the Game of Probability: Literature and Calculation from Pascal and Kleist (2002, trans. 2012), he explores the humanities and mathematical sciences, particularly the science of probability and games, as part of an interrelated discourse and a continuing rhetorical tradition. According to Campe, literary-rhetorical traditions allowed a better understanding of probabilities, while probability theory revitalized literary traditions.

Campe was an assistant professor at the University of Essen from 1986 to 1996. He joined the German department of Johns Hopkins University in 2001 and served as the department's chair for several years. Since 2007, Campe has been a German and Comparative Literature professor at Yale University. At Yale, he has served as the department chair and has been Alfred C. and Martha F. Mohr Professor of German Languages and Literatures since 2016.

From 1974 to 1984, Campe studied German language and literature, philosophy, and classical philology at the Ruhr University Bochum, the University of Freiburg and in Paris under Gerhard Kaiser and Friedrich Kittler. Campe's dissertation was titled „Affekt und Ausdruck. Zur Umwandlung der literarischen Rede im 17. Jahrhundert“. He received his Ph.D. from Freiburg University in 1987 with a summa cum laude. Cample completed his habilitation in 2000 at the University of Essen.

Rüdiger Campe (born 1953 in Hagen) is a German literary scholar of modern German literature whose research focuses on rhetoric, aesthetics, history of science, and literary history and theory. He is currently the Alfred C. and Martha F. Mohr Professor of German and Professor of Comparative Literature at Yale University. He is a recipient of the Humboldt Research Award and the Aby Warburg Prize.