David Wellbery is the LeRoy T. and Margaret Deffenbaugh Carlson University Professor in the Departments of Germanic Studies and Comparative Literature, the Committee on Social Thought, and the College. He is also Chair of the Department of Germanic Studies and the Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on German Literature and Culture. His books are considered classics in the field of German literary history: Lessing’s Laocoön: Semiotics and Aesthetics in the Age of Reason (1984) and The Specular Moment: Goethe’s Early Lyric and the Beginnings of Romanticism (1996). His current projects include a book on Nietzsche’s Geburt der Tragödie as well as a broad-based study of Goethe and philosophy.