Stefanie Hofer

Stefanie Hofer is an associate professor of German in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures at Virginia Tech. She has published on contemporary German literature and cinematic depictions of Germany’s struggle to come to terms with Nazi atrocities and left-wing terrorism. Her current research focuses on the role of autobiographical narratives in post-traumatic healing. Drawing from her own experiences after the murder of her husband during the April 16, 2007, shootings at Virginia Tech, she argues that analyzing literary and filmic depictions of loss and trauma across time and cultures can serve as a catharsis for grieving and, ultimately, provide a self-determined space for working through trauma.

Her work has appeared in scholarly journals for German Studies such as German Life and Letters, Seminar, Women in German Yearbook, for Cinema Studies such as Film Criticism, and for Psychoanalysis such as American Imago. Furthermore, her essay “Lockout: Spacing Trauma and Recovery in the Aftermath of the Virginia Tech Shootings” was the lead article in a special issue dedicated to “Memory and Remembrance: Essays in Psychoanalytic Autobiography” in American Imago. Her research has also been supported by several internal research grants at VT. In 2017, she received the Sturm Award for Faculty Excellence in Research from the VT chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.