PD Dr. Karin Hoepker
PD Dr. Karin Höpker
Please note that, as of April 2023, Dr. Hoepker is away for a guest professorship at FU Berlin and available by appointment only.
Research Interests
- Current projects
- “Literature and the Public Sphere in Differentiated Contemporary Cultures”, DFG research training group
- “Love, Transatlantically: Semantics of Love in Fiction”
- “The Edge of Reason: Fiction, Risk and Probability in American Antebellum Narratives”
- Narrative Theory & Fiction
- US-American literature, 19th to present
- Science & Fiction; Literature & History of Science
- Popular culture, Seriality, and American Television
- Architecture, Urban Studies
- Humanism and Posthumanism
CV
- WS 2021/22 Guest Professor (Vertretung Prof. Dr. Sabine Sielke), Department of English, American, and Celtic Studies (IAAK), Bonn University
- SS 2020 Deputy Chair of American Studies, esp. American Literature (Lehrstuhlvertretung Prof. Dr. A. Kley), Georg Thyssen-Foundation “Lesezeit”-Program
- WS 2019/20 Guest Professor, Department of English and American Studies, Vienna University
- Habilitation April 2018: The Edge of Reason – Fiction, Risk, and Probability in Antebellum American Literary Narrative, awarded the Habilitationspreis 2018
- Research at the George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections & Archives, Bowdoin College Library, Brunswick, Maine, August 2014
- Visiting Scholar, Department for Comparative Literature at Stanford University, 2012/2013
- Summer Academy of the German National Academic Foundation, La Colle-sur-Loup 22.09.-05.10.2013
- Assistant to the managing director of the Institute for English and American Studies’ executive board 2009–11
- Assistant Professor, Department of English and American Studies since April 2009
- 2008/09 awarded postdoctoral fellowship of the Program for the Advancement of Gifted Female Scholars (“Programm zur Förderung besonders begabter Nachwuchswissenschaftlerinnen”)
- Finished her dissertation in 2008 on “No Maps for These Territories? – Towards an Archaeology of Future Urbanity in William Gibson’s Work”
- Student representative at the interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program (2004-2005)
- Fellow, interdisciplinary Ph.D. program of the German Research Foundation (DFG) “Cultural Hermeneutics: Reflections on Difference and Transdifference,” FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg, 2004-2006
- Studied English and American Studies and German Literature at the FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg and at Indiana University Bloomington
Functions
- Principal Investigator DFG research training group “Literature and the Public Sphere in Differentiated Contemporary Cultures”
- Department Representative of Women’s Affairs (Frauenbeauftragte)
- Member Interdisziplinäres Zentrum Gender, Differenz, Diversität (IZGDD)
- Coordinator of the Masters Program “North American Studies: Culture and Literature”
- Editor of the New American Studies Journal (NASJ)
- Peer reviewer for the European Journal of American Studies
Publications
Authored Books
- Höpker, Karin. No Maps for these Territories : Cities, Spaces, and Archaeologies of the Future in William Gibson. Amsterdam: Rodopi/Brill, 2011.
BibTeX: Download
Journal Articles
- Höpker, Karin. "Crises of Legitimacy? Warfare, National Identity, and Counterinsurgency Tactics in the Public Imagination." New American Studies Journal: A Forum Vol 72, 2022.American Crisis (2022).
BibTeX: Download - Höpker, Karin. "Still Mad–On Feminism, Anger, and the Current State of U.S. Women’s Rights." New American Studies Journal: A Forum Vol 72, 2022 (2022).
BibTeX: Download - Höpker, Karin. "“Biomedicalization, Spatial Aesthetics, and the Ethopolitical Subject in Sam Esmail’s Homecoming.”." Literatur in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 1.2 (2022): 51-69.
BibTeX: Download - Höpker, Karin. "“Codes of Intimacy: Love, Chance, and Masculinity in Henry James’s Confidence.”." Studies in American Naturalism Studies in American Naturalism.16.1 (2021): 1 - 21.
BibTeX: Download - Höpker, Karin. "“No-Body’s Watch:’ Nineteenth-Century Capitalism, Temporality, and the Figure of the Loafer.”." New American Studies Journal: A Forum No. 71 (2021).
BibTeX: Download - Kley, Antje, and Karin Höpker. "Beyond the Laboratory: Biotechnology and Literary Knowledge Production in Contemporary Science Novels." Literatur in Wissenschaft und Unterricht XLVIII, 3 (2015) (2017): 195-212.
BibTeX: Download - Höpker, Karin. "Frederick Douglass’s ’The Heroic Slave’ – Risk, Fiction, and Insurance in Antebellum America." Amerikastudien 60.4 (2016): 441-462.
BibTeX: Download
Book Contributions
- Kley, Antje, and Karin Höpker. "Unruly Creatures, Obstinate Things – Bio-Objects and Scientific Knowledge Production in Contemporary Science Novels." Under the Literary Microscope: New Perspectives on Science in Society from Contemporary Fiction. Ed. Sina Farzin, Roslynn Haynes, Susan M. Gaines, University Park, PA: Penn State UP, 2021. pp. 198-217.
BibTeX: Download - Höpker, Karin. "'Only in the Chattel Records' – Obscurity, Historiography, and Frederick Douglass’ "The Heroic Slave"." Reading the Canon. Literary History in the 21st Century. Ed. Philipp Loeffler, Heidelberg: Winter, 2017. 333-363.
BibTeX: Download - Höpker, Karin. "No Longer Your Friendly Neighborhood Killer: Crime Shows and Seriality after 'Dexter'." Transgressive Television: Politics and Crime in 21st-Century American TV Series. Ed. Birgit Däwes, Alexandra Ganser, Nicole Poppenhagen, Heidelberg: Winter, 2015. 247-266.
BibTeX: Download - Höpker, Karin. "Slices of Life: Killing and Seriality in 'Dexter'." Amerikanische Fernsehserien der Gegenwart. Ed. Heike Paul und Christoph Ernst, Bielefeld: Transcript, 2015. 277-303.
BibTeX: Download - Kley, Antje, and Karin Höpker. "Literatur und Wissen: Life Science und The Pursuit of Happiness in Richard Powers' 'Das größere Glück'." Quarks and Letters: Naturwissenschaften in Literatur und Kultur der Gegenwart. Hrg. Aura Heydenreich und Klaus Mecke, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2015. 273-293.
BibTeX: Download - Höpker, Karin. "A Sense of an Ending: Risk, Catastrophe, and Precarious Humanity in Margaret Atwood`s 'Oryx and Crake'." The Anticipation of Catastrophe: Environmental Risk in North American Literature and Culture. Ed. Sylvia Mayer, Alexa Weik von Mossner, Heidelberg: Winter, 2014. 161-180.
BibTeX: Download - Höpker, Karin. "Happiness in Distress - Richard Powers' 'Generosity' and Narratives of the Biomedical Self." Ideas of Order: Narrative Patterns in the Novels of Richard Powers. Ed. Kley Antje, Jan Kucharzewski, Heidelberg: Winter, 2012. 285-312.
BibTeX: Download - Höpker, Karin. "The Cab and the City - Chance Encounters and Certalian Perspectives in Jim Jarmusch's 'Night on Earth'." EthniCities : Metropolitan Cultures and Ethnic Identities in the Americas. Ed. Butler Martin, Jens Gurr, Olaf Kaltmeier, Trier: WVT, 2011. 155-170.
BibTeX: Download - Höpker, Karin. "Inszenierte Lesarten: Kulturelle Begegnungen in und mit anglophonen Texten." Kulturhermeneutik: Interdisziplinäre Beiträge zum Umgang mit kultureller Differenz. Hrg. Christoph Ernst, Walter Sparn, Hedwig Wagner, München: Fink, 2008. 119-124.
BibTeX: Download - Höpker, Karin, Alexandra Ganser, and Christina Hein. "Trickster Hermeneutics als alterNative Schreib-und Lesepraxis: Gerald Vizenors 'Harold of Orange' und Louis Owens 'Bone Game'." Kulturhermeneutik: Interdisziplinäre Beiträge zum Umgang mit kultureller Differenz. Hrg. Christoph Ernst, Walter Sparn, Hedwig Wagner, München: Fink, 2008. 159-186.
BibTeX: Download - Höpker, Karin, and Alexandra Ganser. "Cruises and Crusades: Productions of Urban Space in 'Taxi Driver' and 'Mean Streets'." Conformism, Non-Conformism, and Anti-Conformism in American Culture. Ed. Antonis Balasopoulos, Gesa Mackenthun, Theodora Tsimpouki, Heidelberg: Winter, 2008. 237-257.
BibTeX: Download - Höpker, Karin, and Andrea Kuhn. "Making Over 'The Stepford Wives': Gender, Nostalgia, and Irony in the Hollywood Remake." Screening Gender: Geschlechterszenarien in der gegenwärtigen US-amerikanischen Populärkultur. Ed. Heike Paul, Alexandra Ganser, Münster: LIT, 2008. 75-96.
BibTeX: Download - Höpker, Karin. "Cityscapes, Interstitial Spaces: Heterotopographies in William Gibson's 'Virtual Light-Trilogy'." GrenzGänge/BorderCrossings: Kulturtheoretische Perspektiven. Ed. Gerd Sebald, Michael Popp, Jan Weyand, Münster: LIT, 2006. 170-187.
BibTeX: Download
Workshops, Lectures, and Papers
- Coming up: “Crises of Intimacy – Semantics of Love in the Digital Age,” Crises and Turns, Biennial Conference of the Nordic Association for American Studies (NAAS), Uppsala, Sweden, 25.-27.05.2023
- “Vulnerabilität, Macht und Übersetzung in Katie Kitamuras Roman Intimacies,”with Antje Kley, lecture series Ethik – Text – Kultur, Augsburg, 28.07.2022
- “The Unwinding: Steward O’Nan’s Geography of Cruel Optimism,” Flyover Fictions, Innsbruck University, Austria, 27.-28.05.2022
- “Journeys into the Abyss: Pynchon’s Crying of Lot 49 and the Postmodern City,” Talk and discussion with A. Ganser, Vienna University, 26.11.2021
- “Shipwreck, Risk, and the Novel: Poe’s Poetics of the Improbable,” invited lecture Current Issues in North American and Cultural Studies, Bonn, 19.10.2021
- International Conference Speculative Endeavors – Cultures of Knowledge and Capital in the Long Nineteenth Century, University of Bayreuth, deferred to 22.– 24.10.2021, org. Katrin Horn, Karin Hoepker, Selina Foltinek
- Workshop “Authorship and Cultural Participation in the Nineteenth Century,” German Association for American Studies (GAAS), Heidelberg, June 2021, deferred from 2020
- Invited talk “Fiction after Postmodernism – New Realism and the Dystopian Imagination in M. Atwood’s Work,” Otto-Friedrich-University, Bamberg, 08.02.2021
- “Cold Intimacy: Ex-Urban Masculinity in Contemporary US-American TV Series,” Metropolitan Masculinities: Narratives of Gender and Urban Space, Ruhr-University Bochum, 29.-30.11.2019
- “Semantics of Love and Fragmented Family Ties in E. Marlitt’s Work,” Annual Meeting of the German Studies Association, Seminar “Family and Knowledge” Portland, OR, 3.-6.10. 2019
- “Emotional Economy, Biomedicalization and Narratives of Managed Selves in Contemporary TV-Series,“ DGfA, Hamburg, 13.-15.06.2019
- “’Black Cargo’: Narratives of Immobility in Zora Neale Hurston’s Barracoon and Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad.“ American Im/Mobilities, Austrian American Studies Association, Wien, 16-18.11.2018
- “Peripheral Masculinities: Affect and the Rural in Contemporary US-American TV Series”, De/Constructing Masculinities? Critical Explorations into Affect, Intersectionalities, and the Body, 22-23.06.2018
- Lecture “Ugly Feelings – Öffentlicher Affekt und die Logik des Postfaktischen in den USA.” Lecture Series on Wutbürger – Gutmenschen. Ethische Aspekte gesellschaftlicher Debatten, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, July 24, 2017.
- Lecture “Risk, Whaling, and the Incorporation of Trust in Melville’s Moby-Dick.” Symposium on Re-reading the American Renaissance, University of Vienna, May 09, 2017.
- Lecture “Risk and Fiction – Reading Transatlantic Networks.” Academic Symposium and Humboldt Kolleg on Network@1800: New Directions in German and European Cultural Studies, Bowdoin College, Maine, April 05 – 08, 2017.
- Lecture “Risk, Probability, and the Order of Things in Melville’s Fiction.” Conference on Fictions of Management, FU Berlin, Dec. 08 – 10, 2016.
- Lecture “When the Whale Was Still a Fish: Precarious Knowledge and Melville’s Moby-Dick.” University of Vienna, Nov. 18, 2016.
- Lecture “Ethopolitics: Narrating the Biomedical Self.” Conference on The Biopolitics of America: Bodies, Environments, and the Liberal Imagination, University of Würzburg, July 28 – 30, 2016.
- Lecture “Sea-faring, Whale-hunting, and Mobile Orders of Knowledge in Melville’s Moby-Dick.” International Conference on Maritime Mobilities: Critical Perspectives from the Humanities, University of Vienna, Feb. 01 – 02, 2016.
- Lecture “Perils of the Sea? The Creole-Mutiny and Frederick Douglass’ The Heroic Slave.” International Conference Perilous Passages – The Birth of Risk in 19th Century American Culture, Schloss Thurnau, Oct. 23 – 24, 2015.
- with Jeanne Cortiel. “Perilous Passages – The Birth of Risk in 19th Century American Culture.” International Conference, Schloss Thurnau, Oct. 23 – 24, 2015.
- with Antje Kley. “Unruly Creatures, Obstinate Things – Bio-Objects and Scientific Knowledge Production in Contemporary Science Novels.” Fiction meets Science, Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg, Delmenhorst, Nov. 19 – 22, 2014.
- Workshop “Owning (Human) Nature? Literary Knowledge Production and the Life Sciences.” Annual Conference of the DGfA on Knowledge Landscapes North America, University of Bonn, May 28 – 31, 2015.
- Paper “No Longer Your Friendly Neighborhood Killer: Crime Shows and Seriality after Dexter.” Conference on Transgressive Television: Politics, Crime, and Citizenship in 21st-Century American TV Series, Vienna, Oct. 01 – 03, 2014.
- Workshop “Digital Detritus: Spam, Scrap, Bit Rot.” with Andrew Gross, DGfA 2014, University of Würzburg, June 12 – 15, 2014
- Guest Lecture “Killer Seriality: Dexter and Contemporary American TV.” Literature & Media Studies Program, University of Bamberg, May 06, 2014.
- Lecture “Mad Scientists, Horrid Creatures: Wissenschaftsfiktion in der amerikanischen Populärkultur.” Lecture series Populärkultur, Interdisziplinäres Zentrum Literatur und Kultur der Gegenwart, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, May 05, 2014.
- with Antje Kley. “Literatur und Wissen: Life Science und The Pursuit of Happiness in Richard Powers: Das Größere Glück.” Summer Academy of the German National Academic Foundation, La Colle-sur-Loup, France, Sept. 24, 2013.
- with Antje Kley. “Literatur und Wissen: Life Science and The Pursuit of Happiness in Richard Powers: Das Größere Glück.” Lecture series Quarks and Letters: Naturwissenschaften in Literatur und Kultur der Gegenwart, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, Jan. 07, 2013.
- Workshop and Paper “Life! Risk Narratives and the Novel in the 21st Century,” organized by Prof. Dr. Jeanne Cortiel, Bayreuth Institute for American Studies (BIFAS), July 19 – 20, 2012.
- Workshop “Narratives of Self – Life Sciences and Life Writing in the Biomedical Age.” Annual conference of the German Association for American Studies (DGfA), Mainz, June 2012 (co-organized with Eva-Sabine Zehelein).
- “Dexter – Pathologizing the New Picturesque.” Is It ‘Cause It’s Cool? Affective Encounters with American Culture, 38th Annual Conference of the Austrian Association for American Studies (AAAS), Schloss Leopoldskron, Salzburg, Nov. 04 – 06, 2011.
- Workshop “Faculty Towers – Academic Self-Reflection in Film, Fiction, and Theory.” Annual conference of the German Association for American Studies (DGfA), Jena, June 2009 (co-organized with Jeanne Cortiel).
- with A. Ganser. “The Propitious Moment: Navigating the Ethnic Other in the Urban Geographies of Scorsese’s Mean Streets and Jarmusch’s Night on Earth.” EthniCities: Metropolitan Cultures and Ethnic Identities in the Americas, Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Forschung (ZiF), Bielefeld, Mar. 18 – 20, 2009.
- “The Human at the Threshold: Atwood, Houellebecq, Ishiguro.” Close Encounters – ScienceLiteratureArt, European Biannual Meeting of the Society for Science, Literature, and the Arts (SLSA), Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, June 13 – 16, 2006.
- with A. Ganser. “Cruises and Crusades: Productions of Urban Space in Taxi Driver and Mean Streets.” Workshop on Site of Passage: The City as a Place of (Non)Conformity in Contemporary American Multicultural Literature, Art, Theater, and Film, EAAS Biennial Conference “Conformism, Non-Conformism, and Anti-Conformism in American Culture,” Nicosia, Cyprus, Apr. 07 – 10, 2006.
- “‘Intimate Caesurae:’ Constructions and Transience of ‘Humanity’ in Recent Fiction.” Annual Conference of the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA), Princeton, NJ, Mar. 23 – 26, 2006.
- Co-organized with Dr. Christian Huck, Workshop “The Object of Cultural Studies: Praxis – Cognition – Text?,” featuring Dr. Doris Bachmann-Medick, Dr. Joachim Renn, and Dr. Barbara Zielke, Jan. 28 – 29, 2005.
- with Jens Klenner, George Mason University. “Cruising Spaces of Hyperrealism: The Humvee in William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition.” Panel “‘Like Nothing Else:’ Critical Analyses of the Humvee,” Annual Conference of the Cultural Studies Association (CSA US), Boston, Mass. May, 05 – 09, 2004.
- “FutureNature: Concepts of ‘Life’ and ‘Nature’ in the fictional Worlds of Crichton’s Prey and Atwood’s Oryx and Crake.” Cross-Fertilizations: Literature, Science, and Nature, 3rd Conference of the Association for Science, Literature, and the Environment (ASLE-UK), University College Chichester, UK, July 16 – 18, 2004.
- “FutureNature and the End of Man: Reading Atwood’s Oryx and Crake against Agamben’s The Open.” Annual Conference of the Society for Literature and Science (SLS), Durham, N.C., Oct. 14 – 17, 2004.
- “Mirrorworlds, Urban Spaces: Heterotopographies in William Gibson’s Virtual Light-Trilogy.” Border//Crossings, 6th Graduate Conference, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, Nov. 05 – 07, 2004.
- Co-organized with Dr. Christian Huck, Workshop “Meaning Out of Control? Popular Culture as Interdisciplinary Challenge,” featuring Prof. Dr. R. Winter (Klagenfurt) and Tobias Nagl (Amherst), Apr. 18 – 19, 2004.
- “Nomadic Urban Spaces – Interstitial Topographies in William Gibson’s Virtual Lights-Trilogy.” Mapping Identities: Urban Landscapes and the Discourses of Space, Annual Colloquium of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, Catholic University of America, Washington D.C., Apr. 03, 2004.
Courses
- Narratives of Conspiracy (HS)
- Rurality, Poverty, and Whiteness (HS)
- Epidemic Fiction: Narrative & Contagion (HS)
- New/Realism: Referentiality and Fiction (HS)
- Clones & Enhancements: Life Sciences, Fictions, and Imagining the Late Human (HS)
- The Custom of the Country – Gender, Economy and Affect in the US American Novel of Manners (HS)
- The Function of Fiction: Recent US-American Novels and Theory (HS)
- American Drama – Stage & Screen (HS)
- Narratives of Slavery and Abolition (PS)
- The Morality of Blood? Die Be- und Verhandlungen von Moral in der zeitgenössischen US-TV Serie (HS, with Ingrid Stapf, Medienethik)
- “Black weeds out of a buried heart – Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Fiction” (PS)
- “Terrible things must happen” – American Naturalism (PS)
- American Literary Realism (HS)
- 19th Century American Gothic Literature (PS)
- Mindgame Fiction (PS)
- American Fiction – From Independence to Civil War (Exam Preparation)
- Herman Melville – More than Whales (PS)
- Introduction to Queer Studies (PS)
- Prison in America (PS)
- Mark Twain (PS)
- Suburban Nation – Imaginations of Suburbia in American Culture (PS)
- Memory, History and Popular Culture: Strategies of Remembrance in late 20th Century USA (PS), co-taught with Jens Klenner, George Mason University
- Spooks, Spies, and Private Eyes: African American Detection in Film and Fiction (PS)
- Body and Technology in North-American Independent-Film: David Cronenberg
- Introduction to Literary Studies & Literary Theory