Robert E. Hegel (born 9 January 1943, Goodrich, Michigan; 何谷理) is an American sinologist specializing in the fiction of late imperial China. He taught at Washington University, St. Louis, from 1975 until his retirement in the spring of 2018 and was made Liselotte Dieckman Professor of Comparative Literature and Professor of Chinese in 2006. In 2000, the Institut de France, Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres awarded Hegel the Prix Stanislas Julien for Reading Illustrated Fiction in Late Imperial China.