Congratulations to Katharina Scheerer

We are very happy to announce that Katharina Scheerer has successfully defended her dissertation. In her doctoral thesis titled "Space Travelers, Martians and Golems: The Relationship between Avant-garde and Popular Culture in Science Fiction around 1900," she explores the de-hierarchization of 'high' and 'low' culture in the German 'Fantastic' of the turn of the century.

The starting point of her investigation is the observation that classic science fiction motifs, such as encounters with extraterrestrials or technical utopias, appear in both popular and avant-garde texts of this period. Consequently, the clear distinction between "high" art and popular culture proves to be untenable. Katharina Scheerer's dissertation examines the interactions between texts from both spheres, as well as their publication and canonization contexts, to develop new categories for describing the 'Fantastic' around 1900, which transcend the old dichotomy of high and mass culture.

The project was funded by the German Scholarship Foundation and supervised by Prof. Dr. Moritz Baßler (University of Münster), Prof. Dr. Roland Innerhofer (University of Vienna), and Prof. Dr. Hania Siebenpfeiffer (Philipps University Marburg).

We warmly congratulate Katharina Scheerer on this outstanding achievement and wish her much success in her future endeavors!

For more information about the research project, please click here.