Rate My Professor Lisabeth Hock

Lisabeth Hock served as Associate Professor of German in the Department of Classical and Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Wayne State University from 2001 until her passing on December 20, 2025. She was appointed Assistant Professor in August 2001 and promoted to Associate Professor in August 2008. Hock directed the Junior Year in Munich Program from May 2020, leading it through the global pandemic, reopening operations, spending the 2021-22 and 2022-23 academic years in Munich, establishing health protocols, and expanding scholarships like the Daemmrich Award. Prior to Wayne State, she was Visiting Assistant Professor of German at The College of Wooster from 1998 to 2001. Her academic background includes a Ph.D. in Germanic Languages from Washington University in St. Louis (1998, dissertation: "Replicas of a Female Prometheus: The Textual Personae of Bettina von Arnim"), M.A. from University of Kansas (1991), and B.A. with distinction from University of Kansas (1987), with research abroad at Free University Berlin (1993-94) and Humboldt University Berlin (Fulbright Grant, 1988-89).

Hock's research focused on German women writers, intersections of gender and medicine, gender and race including Africa and the African diaspora, and scholarship of teaching and learning. Key publications include her book Replicas of a Female Prometheus: The Textual Personae of Bettina von Arnim (Peter Lang, 2001); co-editor with Michelle James and Priscilla Layne of German-Speaking Women, Africa, and the African Diaspora (University of Toronto Press, 2025); "The Gender of Melancholy in Nineteenth-Century German Psychiatry" (History of Psychiatry, 22.4, 2011), winner of Women in German Prize for Best Article of 2011; "Evolutionary Theory and the Female Scientist in Wilhelmine von Hillern’s Ein Arzt der Seele (1869)" (German Studies Review, 37.3, 2014); and co-authored pieces in Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German 52.2 (2019), including co-curation of the special issue "Teaching German Studies in a Global Context." Major awards and honors comprise President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching (Wayne State University, 2008), WSU Career Development Chair (2012-13), NEH Next Generation Humanities PhD Faculty Mentoring Fellow (2015-16), CLAS Teaching Award (2007), and grants such as WSU CLAS TIDE Award, Educational Development Grant ($1,500, 2019), and CLAS Online Course Development Grant ($3,500, 2019). She taught German from 1010 to doctoral seminars on Berlin representations, East Germany in film and literature, and Weimar Republic, plus courses in gender, sexuality, women’s studies, global studies, and foreign language pedagogy.