Contact Information
Office Hours
Biography
Mara R. Wade is a professor of Germanic Languages and LIieratures at University of Illinois. As full-time faculty, she has also taught for a semester at at the University of Göttingen and the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien, Hannover. She has enjoyed short-term visiting professorships at the University of Heidelberg and the University of Stockholm. In 2019 she was a visiting research professor at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg with an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation senior research prize. She received her PhD at the University Michigan under the supervision of Gerhard Dünnhaupt.
Research Interests
Renaissance literature and culture; Emblem Studies; German and Scandinavian Literature and Culture; Court Studies; Gender Studies; Digital Humanities
Research Description
Current Research: Forthcoming Chapters & Articles
“Die Dedikationen und Vorreden der Musikdrucke von Michael Praetorius (1571-1621) im Hinblick auf internationale Netzwerke und Mäzenatentum am Wolfenbütteler Hof,“ In: Musik im Umbruch: Zum 400. Todestag von Michael Praetorius. Edited by Sven Limbeck, Sigrid Wirth, and Rainer Schmitt. Wolfenbütteler Renaissanceforschungen.
“Von Sammlungen zu Daten. Digitalisierung, Erschließung und Erforschung in der Bibliothek des 21. Jahrhunderts.” In: Bibliotheksgeschichte der Herzog August Bibliothek. Edited by Sven Limbeck, Peter Burschel, Volker Bauer, Petra Feuerstein-Herz, Johannes Mangei und Hole Rößler.
“Inscriptiones picturæ et emblemata”: How Nürnberg’s Town Hall Emblems Came to the Newberry Library, Chicago.” In: Emblems and Empire. Edited by Mara R. Wade and Christopher Fletcher.
“Emblems in Motion: From the Altdorf Academy and the Nürnberg Town Hall to Sweden and the Colony of Pennsylvania,” In: Collections, Books, and Texts: Early Modern German Cultures of the Book, Essays in Honor of Gerhard Dünnhaupt. Special issue of Daphnis.
Education
PhD University of Michigan
Grants
Mara R. Wade is the recipient of a fellowship from the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, University of Uppsala, Sweden, for spring semester 2023. As the recipient of a senior research prize from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, she was a visiting research professor at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg in 2019.
She has been PI for Emblematica Online, a web resource for Emblem Studies, since 2002. Her campus research partners are Timothy W. Cole and Myung-Ja K. Han and their international founding partner was Thomas Stäcker, formerly of the Herzog August Bibliothek, and now Director of the Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, Darmstadt. Their US research partners are the Newberry Library, Duke University Library, and the Library of the Getty Research Institute. Their international partners are the Herzog August Bibliothek, Glasgow University, and Utrecht University. A pilot project was initially funded by a Trans-Coop grant from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Continuing research has been supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Her research in several fields of early modern studies has been recognized by individual fellowships and grants from the Getty Research Institute, Newberry Library, Herzog August Bibliothek as a Senior Fellow of the State of Lower Saxony, DAAD, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Fulbright, and American Scandinavian Foundation. She has also received fellowship from the ATTG, the RSA (for research at the Centro Giorgio Cini, Venice), CNRS, Herzog Ernst Stipendium der Fritz Thyssen Stiftung at the Forschungsbibliothek Gotha. At the University of Illinois she has twice held appointments with the Center for Advanced Study.
At the Newberry Library Center for Renaissance Studies her research with Lia Markey and Christopher Fletcher on the project “Emblems and Empire” was funded by University of Illinois consortium funding, the Kress Foundation, and Goethe Institute, while her research group with Professor Elisabeth Wåghäll-Nivre, Stockholm University, was funded by the Riksjubilæumsfondet and initially also the INSPIRE program at the University of Illinois. She has been awarded several grants from the Campus Research Board at the University of Illinois, including the Humanities Release Time from teaching to pursue research.
Awards and Honors
2023 - Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, University of Uppsala, Sweden
2018 - Getty Research Institute, Getty Scholar in Residence
2018 - Humboldt Prize, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
2016 - Recipient LAS Dean’s Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.
Courses Taught
Seminar on Early Modern German Literature
- Transgressions: Money, Knowledge, Sex, and Violence
- Gender and Genre in the Works of Georg Philipp Harsdörffer
- Writing and Reading Women
Campus Honors: Books Matter, Book Matters
Introduction to Graduate Studies
Introduction to German Literature
Holocaust in Context
History of German Cinema
Additional Campus Affiliations
Program for Comparative and World Literatures
Media and Cinema Studies, Gender and Women's Studies
International Studies
Program for Jewish Society and Culture
Library Administration
European Union Center
Campus Honors Program
Scandinavian Studies
External Links
Editorships
Mara Wade is the Editor-in-Chief of Emblematica: Essays in Word and Image.
She serves on the Editorial Boards of
- Nordic Journal of Renaissance Studies
- Spektrum, Editorial Board, monograph series, German Studies Association.
- Warwick Studies in Renaissance Thought and Culture
Highlighted Publications
Monographs
The German Baroque Pastoral Singspiel. Berner Beiträge zur Barockgermanistik, edited by Blake Lee Spahr, vol. 7. Bern: Lang, 1990. 353 pp.
Triumphus Nuptialis Danicus: German Court Culture and Denmark. The Great Wedding of 1634. Wolfenbütteler Arbeiten zur Barockforschung, vol. 27. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1996. 444 pp., 150 illustrations.
Books Edited and Co-Edited
Pomp, Power and Politics: Essays Commemorating the 400th Anniversary of the Coronation of King Christian IV of Denmark (1596). Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2003 (=double volume, Daphnis 32).
Digital Collections and the Management of Knowledge: Renaissance Emblem Literature as a Case Study for the Digitization of Rare Texts and Images. Salzburg: DigiCULT, 2004. http://www.digicult.info/downloads/dc_emblemsbook_highres.pdf
(with Gerhard F. Strasser). Die Domänen des Emblems: Außerliterarische Anwendungen der Emblematik. Wolfenbütteler Arbeiten zur Barockforschung, vol. 39. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2004.
(with Glenn Ehrstine). Foreign Encounters in German Literature before 1700. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004 (=double volume, Daphnis 33).
(with Warren U. Ober). Russian Translations from English and German Poetry. Waterloo, Ontario: University of Waterloo, 2005 (=Germano-Slavica 15).
(with Simon McKewon). The Emblem in Scandinavia and the Baltic. Glasgow Emblem Studies, vol. 11. Glasgow: Glasgow Emblem Studies, 2007.
Emblem Digitization: Conducting Digital Research with Renaissance Texts and Images. 2012 (=Early Modern Literary Studies 20 [special issue]).
http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/emlshome.html.
(with Sara Smart). The Palatine Wedding of 1613: Protestant Alliance and Court Festival. Wolfenbütteler Abhandlungen zur Renaissanceforschung, vol. 29. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2013. 650 pp., 100 illustrations, 22 color plates. This book earned the Weiss/Brown Award in Renaissance Studies from the Newberry Library, Chicago, 2012.
Gender Matters: Discourses of Violence in Early Modern Literature and the Arts. Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft, vol. 169. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2014. 385 pp., 22 illustrations, some in color. This book was presented at the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association, Chicago, 2014.
Women - Books - Courts: Knowledge and Collecting before 1800. Frauen - Bücher - Höfe: Wissen und Sammeln vor 1800. Essays in Honor of Jill Bepler. Edited by Volker Bauer, Elizabeth Harding, Mara R. Wade, and Gerhild Scholz Williams. Wolfenbütteler Arbeiten zur Barockforschung, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2018. 450 pp.
Recent Publications
Chapters and Articles since 2017
Wade, Mara R. “Teaching Ethics through the Emblem: The Academy at Altdorf (1577-1623) and Georg Rem’s and Peter Isselburg’s Emblemata Politica (1617),” In: Teaching Ethics in Early Modern Europe. Special volume of History of Universities XXXIV/2, edited by Danilo Facca, Valentina Lepri, and Matthias Roick (2021): 137-170.
Wade, Mara R. “Hidden in Plain Sight: Melchior Lorck's Emblematized Adages.” In: Quid est Secretum? Ed. by Agnés Guiderdoni, Ralph Dekoninck, and Walter Melion. Intersections, Vol. 65.2. Leiden: Brill, 2020, 572-616. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004432260_019
Wade, Mara R. Emblematik als Friedensinstrument: Johann Klajs Friedensdichtungen.” In Johann Klaj (1616–1656). Friedensdichter, Poet, Theologe. Ed. by Dirk Niefanger and Werner Wilhelm Schnabel. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020, 431- 466.
Wade, Mara R. “Emblems Across the Religious Divide: The Emblem and Education of Princess Dorothea von Anhalt.” In: Cultural Shifts and Ritual Transformation in Reformation Europe: Essays in Honor of Susan C. Karant-Nunn. Ed. by Victoria Christman and Marjorie Elizabeth Plummer. (Leiden: Brill, 2020, 210-227).
Wade, Mara R. "Picturing Peace: Johann Vogel's Emblematical Meditations on Peace, Nürnberg 1649." In: Rethinking Europe: War and Peace in Early Modern German Lands. Ed. by Sigrun Haude, Christian Schneider, and Gerhild Scholz Williams. Chloe, Vol. 48. Leiden: Brill 2019, 300-314. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004401921_017
Wade, Mara R. “Princess Magdalena Sibylle’s Golden Horn: Dynastic Women and Cultural Transfer Between Denmark and Saxony.” In Telling Objects—Contextualizing the Role of the Consort in Early Modern Europe. Ed.by Jill Bepler and Svante Norrhem. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2018, 155-167.
Wade, Mara R.“Dorothea of Anhalt. Fürstin von Braunschweig-Lüneburg. The Emblem Book as Stammbuch.” In Women - Books - Courts: Knowledge and Collecting before 1800. Frauen - Bücher - Höfe: Wissen und Sammeln vor 1800. Essays in honor of Jill Bepler. Ed. by Volker Bauer, Elizabeth Harding, Mara R. Wade, and Gerhild Scholz Williams, 297–312. Wolfenbütteler Arbeiten zur Barockforschung, vol.151. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2018, 297-312.
Wade, Mara R. “Emblems and Cultural Exchange between Nürnberg and Riga in the Seventeenth Century.” In: Gothards Frīdrihs Stenders (1714-1796) un apgaismība Baltijā Eiropas kontekstā. Gotthard Friedrich Stender (1714-1796) und die Aufklärung im Baltikum im europäischen Kontext. Gotthard Friedrich Stender and the Enlightenment in the Baltics in European Contexts. Ed. by Māra Grudule. Riga: Institute of Literature, Folklore and Arts of the University of Latvia, 2018, 337-348. (This volume received the prize of best scholarly book published in Latvia in 2018.)
Wade, Mara R. "Ballet, Kunstkammer, and the Education of Princess Hedwig Eleonora at the Gottorf Court". Queen Hedwig Eleonora and the Arts: Court Culture in Seventeenth-Century Northern Europe. Taylor and Francis. 2017, 159-178. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315089249
Wade, Mara R. "Women's Networks of Knowledge: The Emblem Book as Stammbuch." Daphnis. 2017, 45(3-4). 492-509. https://doi.org/10.1163/18796583-04503008
Wade, Mara R.(with Timothy Cole and Myung-Ja K. Han).“Linked Open Data and Semantic Web Technologies in Emblematica Online” In Early Modern Studies and the Digital Turn: New Tools for New Research Questions, edited by Michael Ullyot, Diane Jakacki, and Laura Estill. New Technologies in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, vol. 502. Toronto and Tucson: Iter and University of Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2016, 201–35.