Mara R. Wade is professor emerita of Germanic Languages & Literatures at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; she is the past president of the Renaissance Society of America. Mara Wade is an elected member of the Royal Society for the History of Denmark / Det Kongelige Danske Selskab for Fædrelandets Historie. Her research focuses on emblems, court studies of Germany and Scandinavia, gender studies, and early modern German. In 2023 Collections and Books, Images and Texts: Early Modern German Cultures of the Book and in 2024 Emblems in the Free Imperial City: Emblems, Empire, and Identity in Early Modern Nürnberg (the latter with Christopher Fletcher and Andrew Schwenk) were published. Playing it by The Book. Printed and Manuscript Book Games in Early Modern Europe (with Justyna Kiliańczyk-Zięba) has been accepted for publication in Wolfenbütteler Forschungen.