Winfried Herget has been professor of American Studies at Johannes Gutenberg-Universität since 1978. From 1968-1970 and 1981-1982 he was a fellow and visiting professor at Harvard University. His research interests include colonial American culture, political culture and rhetoric, religion and politics, American-German relations and modern American novel and drama.

• Whitman in music and the visual arts, recent opera and video games; global Whitman network; Whitman and modernism; Whitman and democracy; democratic poetry; the problem of inclusiveness; Whitman and materialism, idealism and pragmatism; the significance of praxis; tradition and innovation in Whitman