Dr. Ruth Gehrmann

wiss. Mitarbeiterin, Abteilung Banerjee

I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Obama Institute and co-leader (with Professor Mita Banerjee) of the project „Best Agers/Best Places: Successful Aging and Spatial Human Differentiation“ at the DFG CRC 1482 “Human Differentiation”. I am specifically interested in the representation and construction of age and aging at the intersections with popular culture. In this context, a current project explores the representation of older people in young adult fiction to investigate how established readings of age are circumvented or reinforced. In recent articles, I have explored non-human aging in “The Eight-Legged Confidant” (2024), the staging of older generations online in “The Digital Granny: Staging Grandparents on Social Media” (2023), and the concept of age horror in the Twilight franchise (2025). I am also invested in my research in the field of the Blue Humanities and am doing archival work to unearth female voices on the oceans of the 19th century (2026). 

My dissertation Future T/Issues: Organ Transplantation in Medical and Literary Narratives (2024), employs a new historicist approach to interrelated works of different forms of writing. By engaging with life writing, for instance doctor’s autobiographies, works of medical research and examples of speculative fiction, I emphasize intrinsic ties between these publications and underline their shared interest in speculation. I developed the project within the DFG Research Training Group “Life Sciences – Life Writing” at Mainz University.

I hold a B.A. in British and American Studies from the University of Konstanz, an M.A. in American Studies from the University of Augsburg, and a PhD in American Studies from JGU Mainz. During my studies, I stayed at the National University of Ireland in Galway for one semester, had the opportunity to spend a semester as a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University, New York, and taught at York University in Toronto.

 

Research Interests

  • The New Media
  • Postcolonial Studies
  • Aging Studies
  • Medical Humanities
  • Ecocriticism
  • Popular Culture
  • Young Adult Fiction
  • Speculative Fiction

Contact

Dr. Ruth Gehrmann

Philosophicum II
Jakob-Welder-Weg 20
Room 02.221

Phone: +49-6131-39-29229
gehrmann@uni-mainz.de

Office hours: by appointment

Links

Selected Publications