Professional Life: A Scholar and Teacher
- Feb 14
- 2 min read
Updated: Feb 19
Dr. Lisabeth Hock spent twenty-four years teaching German at Wayne State University. She was a scholar of 19th-century women's writing, a demanding teacher, and someone who genuinely cared that her students learned. The people who worked with her and studied under her knew they were in the presence of someone who did her job well.
For those who knew her work, Lisabeth Hock was the kind of colleague you wanted on a committee and the kind of teacher whose classes actually mattered. She published carefully, taught rigorously, and ran the Junior Year in Munich program with the same attention to detail she brought to everything else.
Professional Life: A Scholar and Teacher
Lisabeth Hock arrived at Wayne State in 2001 with a recent PhD from Washington University and three years of teaching at The College of Wooster behind her. She would spend the next twenty-four years in the Department of Classical and Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures, building a noteworthy career.
Her scholarly work centered on 19th-century German women writers, particularly the ways gender intersected with medical discourse and racial constructions. Her 2011 article in History of Psychiatry on women and melancholy examined how psychiatric textbooks from 1803 to 1913 revealed the tensions between clinical observation and cultural assumptions about female nature. She was equally interested in how evolutionary theory shaped literary representations of women scientists, as in her work on Wilhelmine von Hillern. Most recently, she co-edited a volume on German-speaking women, Africa, and the African diaspora with Michelle James and Priscilla Layne, published by the University of Toronto Press in 2025.
But scholarship was only part of her work. She taught everything from first-semester German through doctoral seminars. Her courses on the Weimar Republic, 20th-century Berlin, and East Germany in film and literature drew on her deep knowledge of German cultural history. She also designed interdisciplinary courses for gender and sexuality studies and global studies, and taught graduate pedagogy.
Students found her demanding—there were always more books to read than seemed possible—but also inclusive, understanding, and genuinely invested in their learning. "She stays up late grading and sends emails," one student wrote. "She's really dedicated."
When she became director of the Junior Year in Munich program, she approached it with characteristic thoroughness. She spent the 2021-22 and portions of the 2022-23 academic years in Munich, not to escape Detroit but to understand what her students experienced abroad. It was the kind of choice that defined her: careful, committed, willing to do the hard work of actually knowing what she was administering.
The university websites now list her profile in past tense. It's a small grammatical shift that changes everything.
She leaves behind a body of work that will continue to be cited, courses that shaped how students think about gender and history, and a program she stewarded through difficult years. Those of us who worked alongside her, learned from her, or benefited from her care know what the field has lost.
Lisa was a fellow graduate student in the East European Studies program at Kansas University, and we were both Fulbright Scholars in 1988-189. She was funny and kind and very, very smart. I only saw her intermittently over the years (at the German Studies Association conference) but would stop and chat with her. This comes us quite a shock. My deepest condolences to her family.
I first met Lisa in 1991, when I arrived at Wash U as an international exchange student from Germany. A couple of years later, we also shared some time in Berlin (with a whole group of us there simultaneously), including a memorable stylish photoshoot and a Thanksgiving excursion… After my return to the U.S., we variously crossed path at conferences, most recently this last fall on a GSA roundtable (organized by Gisela) on 250 years of Germanistik. The three of us went out for Ethiopian food—a wonderful evening of catching up on a no-frills patio in Arlington, Virginia. It is still hard to imagine/accept that we can’t do this again. I will miss Lisa’s warmth, sharp insight, sense of humor,…
I no longer remember when or how I met Lisa, though I know it was through our WashU connection. I even had an MLA interview with her and her Wayne State colleagues. Though the interview didn't lead to a job, I remember her kindness. We would greet each other at conferences. I hadn't seen her since the pandemic and I very sorry to hear this news.
I only met Dr. Hock a few times, first as a JYM student in 2025, but I appreaciate those experiences with her. When I first met her in July 2025, we connected on our experiences at the College of Wooster, among other things, as different as they were from one another. Her positivity toward and encouragement of numerous students, such as myself and my JYM peers, was also much appreciated. Her loss was certainly felt here at Wooster, and I wish her family well.
Lisa and I crossed paths a few times beginning in 2001, when she was finishing a 3-year visiting professorship at the College of Wooster and I began teaching there. Before they left for Detroit, where she would begin her long-term appointment, Lisa and Mark shared recommendations about the town and the college, and Lisa generously shared syllabi she had developed for courses. We got along immediately and decided we would stay in touch.
Although I never visited Lisa and Mark and their girls in Detroit, I met up with Lisa nearly every year at either the GSA or Women in German conferences, where we would hang out, talk about the joys and challenges of parenting, and catch up on our…