Dissertation Award for Katharina Scheerer

For her dissertation, Populäre Moderne: Science-Fiction zwischen Groschenheft und Avantgarde (1863–1947) ('Popular Modernity: Science Fiction between Pulp and Avant-Garde, 1863–1947'), Katharina Scheerer received two dissertation awards, conferred by the Department of Philology and the Society for Research in the Fantastic (GFF).

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.

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!