Dr. Ruth Gehrmann

I am a postdoctoral researcher at the DFG CRC 1482 “Studies in Human Differentiation” in Professor Mita Banerjee’s project on “Successful Aging: Best Agers at the Intersection of Age and Performance Differentiation.” I am specifically interested in the representation and construction of age and aging in the field of lifestyle. In this context, I explore the representation of older people in the pop cultural realm and investigate how established readings of age are circumvented or reinforced. In recent articles, I have looked at the role of age (also intertwined with gender) in the Twilight series, the TV show and comic series The Boys, and social media.

My dissertation Future T/Issues: Organ Transplantation in Medical and Literary Narratives, 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

• CRC 1482 “Studies in Human Differentiation”

Selected Publications

• Future T/Issues: Organ Transplantation in Medical and Literary Narratives
• “Dreamscapes as Sites of Resistance: The Unconscious State, Decision-Making and Community- Formation in Indigenous Speculative Fiction for Young Adults”
• “‘And I’m Going to Get Old’
  Age Horror in the Twilight Franchise”
• “The eight-legged confidant: Narrativizing octopuses and non-human aging“