Babette B. Tischleder is Professor of North American Studies at the University of Göttingen. She is the author of Body Trouble: Entkörperlichung, Whiteness und das amerikanische Gegenwartskino (2001), a book on embodiment, theories of race, and contemporary cinema. Her book The Literary Life of Things: Case Studies in American Fiction (Campus, 2014) contributes to new materialist thought and discusses texts from Harriet Beecher Stowe to Jonathan Franzen. She has published articles on American literature, media culture, film and television studies, and thing theory. Her current research projects are "Life Forms of the Nonhuman from Early Cinema to the Digital Age" and "World Building in American Serial Television."