Call for Nominations:
Martin Schüwer Publication Prize for Excellence in Comics Studies 2026
Annual award for the best article by an early-career scholar, organized by the German Society for Comics Studies (ComFor) and the Committee for Comics Studies at the German Society for Media Studies (GfM)
The German Society for Comics Studies (ComFor) and the Committee for Comics Studies at the German Society for Media Studies (GfM) are announcing for 2026, for the eighth time, the Martin Schüwer Publication Prize for Excellence in Comics Studies. The prize has been awarded annually since 2019. It supports scholars who, regardless of their actual age, do not yet hold a permanent academic position. By honoring outstanding publications in the field of interdisciplinary comics research, the award aims to create more visibility for comics-related research, promoting and communicating its importance to a wider public.
The prize is named after the late Martin Schüwer, a scholar of English Literature and Culture who specialized in comics studies and who passed away far too early in 2013. His dissertation Wie Comics erzählen (2008), published 18 years ago, has broken new grounds for narratological comics research and has become a reference work in German-language comics studies. With this and his other works on comics as well as on the didactics of English literature, Martin Schüwer set valuable standards for the excellence, accessibility and range that publications in our fields can achieve. Both as a comics researcher and as a person, Schüwer had a distinct way of engaging with people, characterized by his open-mindedness and a genuine interest in others. Talking with and to others, he aimed to advance comics studies. We dedicate the award to him and this very goal.
Submissions and Nominations:
Accepted for nomination are published articles of chapter length. They may have appeared in anthologies or journals, as chapters, or in longer monographs, but also as essays and other text forms of similar length. The submitted and nominated texts may have been written by one or more authors. All authors must not hold a permanent academic position at the time of nomination.
Contributions nominated for the Martin Schüwer Prize 2026 must have been published in German or English between January 1, 2024, and December 31, 2025. Texts still/not yet in print or only accepted for publication cannot be considered. Repeat submissions are not possible. Also excluded are complete monographs and unpublished qualifying publications. The editorship of anthologies or journal issues is not eligible for nomination, but individual contributions in these collections are.
Nominations are to include the recommended text as well as a short substantiation (300–500 words). Self-nominations are possible and welcome, but the jury would also particularly like to call for third-party nominations of impressive texts. Deadline for all submissions is April 30, 2026. Please send your nominations as one complete PDF to schuewer-preis@comicgesellschaft.de.
Prize and Award Ceremony:
The official announcement of the award winner will take place during the annual conference of the German Society for Media Studies (online; non yet announced). The award ceremony with an invited lecture by the award winner will take place at the annual conference of the German Society for Comics Studies (30.09.–02.10.2026, Justus-Liebig-University Gießen). The laureate will also receive the prize money of 700 €, will not have to pay the membership fee of the German Society for Media Studies (GfM) for one year and will become an honorary member of ComFor for life.
Previous Laureates:
2025:
Charlotte J. Fabricius: “Drawing in Circles: Feminized Labour in Autobiographical Comics and Cartoons on Instagram”.
Honourable Mention for
Andrea Hoff & Wanda J. Kehewin: “Unravelling Time: Reading Temporal Shifts as Intergenerational Narrative Weaving in Wanda John-Kehewin’s Visions of the Crow“.
→ Continue to detailed laudations of the jury 2025
2024:
Bruce Mutard: “From Giotto to Drnaso: The Common Well of Pictorial Schema in ‘High’ Art and ‘Low’ Comics”.
Honourable Mention for
Helene Bongers: “Frauendarstellungen in Catherine Meurisses ‚Moderne Olympia‘: Eine bande dessinée als feministische Kunst-Geschichte”.
→ Continue to detailed laudations of the jury 2024
2023:
Anna Beckmann: “Strategies of Ambiguity: Non-binary Figurations in German-language Comics”.
Honourable Mentions for
Christian Alexius: “Comicforschung und Filmwissenschaft: Wechselwirkungen ausgelassene Pfade und mögliche Wege in eine gemeinsame Interdisziplinarität”.
as well as
Johannes C.P. Schmid: “Cultural Genocide in Joe Sacco’s Paying the
Land“.
→ Continue to detailed laudations of the jury 2023
2022:
Felipe Gómez: “Will it be possible? Apocalypse and Resistance in Latin American Graphic Novels”.
→ Continue to detailed laudations of the jury 2022
2021:
Benoît Crucifix: “Drawing, Redrawing, and Undrawing”.
Honourable Mentions for
Anne Rüggemeier: “Transformative List-making: Challenging Heteronormativity and Ableism in Ellen Forney’s Somatographies”.
and
Lukas R.A. Wilde: “Material Conditions and Semiotic Affordances: Natsume Fusanosuke’s Many Fascinations with the Lines of Manga”.
→ Continue to detailed laudations of the jury 2021
2020:
Gesine Wegner: “Reflections on the Boom of Graphic Pathography: The Effects and Affects of Narrating Disability and Illness in Comics.”
Honourable Mention for
Joanna Nowotny: “Repetition oder Revolution? Posthumane Identitätsentwürfe im Superheldencomic der Gegenwart.”
2019:
Dorothee Marx (née Schneider): “The ‘Affected Scholar’. Reading Raina Telgemeier’s Ghosts as a Disability Scholar and Cystic Fibrosis-Patient.”
Honourable Mentions for
Nina Eckhoff-Heindl : “Opazität und Transparenz: Überlegungen zum poietischen Potenzial in Chris Wares Comics und Animationen”
and
Lukas Etter: “Visible Hand? Subjectivity and Its Stylstic Markers in Graphic Narratives.”