Ruth Mayer holds the chair of American Studies at Leibniz University in Hannover, Germany. She has published in English and in German, with a strong focus on modernity, serialization and the practices and aesthetics of mass culture. Her most recent book publication is Serial Fu Manchu: The Chinese Super-Villain and the Spread of Yellow Peril Ideology (Temple UP 2014). She is a member of the Popular Seriality Research Unit, where she is currently directing a project on the cultural productivity of film serials from 1910 to 1940.