Strange Natures: Futurity, Empathy, and the Queer Ecological Imagination

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments Thank you to all of my friends, family, colleagues, teachers, and students. I am grateful for the two readers who offered enthusiastic, helpful comments on my initial manuscript; this book is no doubt better for their input. I am also grateful to Larin McLaughlin, the University of Illinois Press’s senior acquisitions editor, for her guidance. Parts of Strange Natures began as dissertation chapters, supported by a fellowship from the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities at Vanderbilt University. Carolyn Dever, Dana Nelson, and Paul Young served on my dissertation committee and have been invaluable resources throughout my career. Judith (Jack) Halberstam served as my outside dissertation reader and has been crucial to my work here—even when we disagree. The DepartmentofEnglishatVanderbilthasalwaysbeensupportiveofmywork ;special thanks go to Jay Clayton, Mark Schoenfield, and Mark Wollaeger for help of various kinds over the years. I’m also a huge fan of Teresa Goddu—as a teacher, scholar, and coffee date. Vera Kutzinski’s graduate course on ecocriticism helped sow many of the seeds for this book; I have to thank her for insisting that I read Shani Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night. Susan Ryan and Susan Griffin hired me into the Department of English at the University of Louisville just as I was starting this book project and, for some reason, kept letting me stay. My warmest thanks to them both. My colleagues at Louisville—including Tom Byers (especially!), Amy Clukey, KarenHadley,AaronJaffe,KarenKopelson,BrianLeung,KikiPetrosino,and Andrew Rabin—have also been incredibly welcoming. I will miss them but Seymour_Strange.indd 9 2/4/13 10:28 AM look forward to joining an equally fabulous group of people at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. My students at Vanderbilt University and the University of Louisville have been incredible sports as I’ve foisted my wacky ideas upon them. More importantly , though, they have talked back to me, helping me think through many of the major concepts in this book. Special thanks to my Minority Traditions in American Literature students at Louisville, my queer ecocriticism/ ecology students, and the following students in particular: Alex Sugzda, Lauren R. Hall, Shekinah Lavalle, Lana Lea, and Colton Wilson. I have the best friends in the world. Virginia Allison, Christine Bolghand, DarinDeWitt,WillFunk,JoyaGolden,MichelleHorejs,NathanIhara, ­ Audra Kudirka, Jeff Morse, Gabriela Nuñez, Sarah Pierce, Erin Tarver, Frances Ulman , Jane Wanninger, and the late, great Jeremy Lespi are particularly precious to me. In addition to being dear friends, Katherine Fusco and Josh Epstein have been motivational writing partners. I have also been blessed with various partners in crime who have passed through Louisville over the years,includingRachelCobb-Vincent,AnneO.Fisher,AlyssaKnickerbocker, Derek Mong, Heather Slomski, Erin Shaw, Jonathan Vincent, and Cutter Wood. Jonathan, along with Amy Clukey, offered incisive comments on this manuscript. Thanks also to the amazing Twin Peaks/Northern Exposure/movie nightgang;I’llwritethebookonPacificNorthwestnoirsomeday,Ipromise! Throughout my grad-school years and beyond, I have had the pleasure of eating, drinking, thinking, and being merry with the likes of Beau Baca, Mary Butterfield, Ben Graydon, Sarah Hansen, Justin Haynes, Christian Long, Neal Palmer, Brian Rejack, and Rob Watson. Amanda Hagood, Donald Jellerson, John Morrell, Dan Spoth, and Heather Talley also deserve my thanks for helping me think through queer ecology in various ways over the past several years. My parents, Michael and Cecilia, and my brother, Philip, have loved and supported me from afar and from up close whenever possible. I’m pretty sure that our family’s obsession with Alfred Hitchcock and The Twilight Zone is somehow to blame for much of my work. Finally, perhaps it will not seem exceedingly strange, in the acknowledgments for a book focused on environmental concerns, for me to express my appreciation for the environment in which it was written. I adore the many quirks and charms of the place I’ve called home for the last three years; they’ve inspired and sustained me in countless ways. Louisville, I love you! x Acknowledgments Seymour_Strange.indd 10 2/4/13 10:28 AM ...