Arne Höcker
Associate Professor • Associate Chair of Graduate Studies
Germanic & Slavic Languages & Literatures

Dr. Höcker's research and teaching 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; and (3) the rise and fall of the medium of literature from the 18th century to the present. He has written two monographs: Epistemologie des Extremen: Lustmord in Kriminologie und Literatur um 1900 (Fink 2012) reconstructs the creation of criminological knowledge in light of modernist poetics and the narrative strategies invoked in the objectification of the criminal; 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. In addition, Höcker is the co-editor of various journal issues and thematic volumes on Kafka's institutions, the role of narrative for the production of scientific cognition, practices of citation, and on materiality and literature in the 19th century. Most recently, he has been interested in the history of the psychiatric and cultural concept of paranoia and how it can help us understand the re-emergence and rise of sovereign forms of authority in the 20th and the 21st centuries. He received his MA from the Humboldt-University in Berlin in 2002, and his PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 2008. Before coming to CU, he taught at Wesleyan University and NYU.

Höcker welcomes undergraduate and graduate students to discuss your research projects and if you believe that his areas of expertise are relevant for your own studies, he will happily consider joining your committee.

He regularly teaches "The Frankfurt School," "Tracing the Criminal," and "Inside Nazi Germany."