Dissertation Award for Katharina Scheerer

Katharina Scheerer has received the Dissertation Award of the German Society for Research in the Fantastic (GFF) for her dissertation Populäre Moderne: Science-Fiction zwischen Groschenheft und Avantgarde (1863–1947) ('Popular Modernity: Science Fiction between Pulp and Avant-Garde, 1863–1947').

In her dissertation, Katharina Scheerer examines how motifs now central to science fiction—such as encounters with extraterrestrial life, interplanetary travel, and techno-utopian imaginaries—emerged not only in popular media like pulp magazines but also within avant-garde literary texts in the German-speaking world around the turn of the 20th century. She demonstrates that the conventional divide between “high” and “low” culture, between art and entertainment, cannot be sustained in this field.

The international jury praised her work as a significant contribution to the study of the fantastic and science fiction. The €1,000 award is presented every two years and was conferred at this year’s GFF annual conference in Gießen.

Scheerer’s dissertation will be published this autumn by Rombach Verlag in the series Texturen.

We are delighted about this recognition and warmly congratulate Katharina Scheerer on her outstanding achievement!