Dr. Hoecker's research centers around three main areas of expertise: (1) cultural and critical theory from Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud to the Frankfurt School and post-structuralist criticism; (2) the history and theory of scientific cultures; (3) the rise and fall of the medium of literature from the 18th century to the present. His first book, Epistemologie des Extremen: Lustmord in Kriminologie und Literatur um 1900 (Fink 2012) reconstructs the creation of criminological knowledge in light of modernist poetics and narrative. His second book, The Case of Literature: Forensic Narratives from Goethe to Kafka (Cornell UP 2020) offers an investigation into the history of the literary case study from its emergence in the 18th century to its peculiar role in the development of Freud's psychoanalysis. His latest research focuses on the history of the psychiatric and cultural concept of paranoia and its manifold relations to power and authority.
keywords
History and Theory of Scientific Cultures, German Literature from the Enlightenment to the present, Critical Theory, Frankfurt School, history of human sciences, psychoanalysis, realism, Modernism Goethe, Kafka, Musil
