She has a Ph.D. in German literature from the University of Minnesota. She has presented and published on German Jewish poet Nelly Sachs and second language acquisition. Dr. Hoyer is the recipient of a Fulbright research fellowship, Hadassah International Research grant, numerous travel grants, and many pedagogy and technology grants. Research interests include Jewish studies, poetry, German and American pop culture of the 1980s, and film. She is currently working on a project that examines 20th-century poetic interpretations of ancient and classical poetic genres, in particular epigraphy, and a study of the Jewish press in Germany during the 1930s.