PD Dr. Karin Höpker

Karin Hoepker is PD in American Studies at FAU and a guest professor of American Literature at Konstanz University in Spring/Summer 2025. Her work focuses on literary knowledge production and the  function of fiction across media. She is specifically interested in the intersections of literature and the sciences, in economic criticism and the future of work, ecocriticism, and in the emerging semantics of risk since the nineteenth century.

Selected publications in the field of literature and the public sphere:

• Höpker, Karin with Sabine Friedrich and Svenja Hagenhoff, eds. Digitality and the Public Sphere: Literature, Mediality, Practice. Metzler (forthcoming Fall 2026).
• Höpker, Karin. "From the Gyre – Oceanic Archive and the Archeology of Fiction in Ruth Ozeki’s Tale for the Time Being and Richard Powers’ Playground." Archiving America/American Archives, eds. Daniel Stein et al. Winter (forthcoming Fall/Winter 2026).
• Höpker, Karin. "The You You Are. TV-Serien als öffentliches Medium von Sozial- und Selbsttechnologien.” Literatur und Medienöffentlichkeiten: Orientierende Fallstudien. Eds. Aida Bosch and Antje Kley (Literatur und Öffentlichkeit / Literature and the Public Sphere Bd. 1.). Berlin/Heidelberg: Metzler, 2025. 83-107. Open Access: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-69735-1_4
• Höpker, Karin. “Biomedicalization, Spatial Aesthetics, and the Ethopolitical Subject in Sam Esmail’s Homecoming.” Self-Help, Ability, Positive Thinking in North American Culture. Eds. Martin Klepper and Kristina Graaff. Literatur in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 1.2 (2022): 51-69.
• Höpker, Karin with Antje Kley. “Unruly Creatures, Obstinate Things – Bio-Objects and Scientific Knowledge Production in Contemporary Science Novels.” Under the Literary Microscope: New Perspectives on Science and Society in Contemporary Fiction. Eds. Sina Farzin, Roslynn Haynes, Susan M. Gaines. University Park, PA: Penn State UP, 2021. 198-217.