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Acknowledgments I have benefited from the help and advice of many friends and colleagues in pursuing this project. Among them are Alan Ackerman, Wendy Arons, Emma Katherine Atwood, Philip Auslander, David Bevington, Rhonda Blair, John Russell Brown, Marvin Carlson, William Carroll, Mary Crane, Scott Cummings, J. K. Curry, Tracy Davis, Jody Enders, Penny Farfan, Verna Foster, Elinor Fuchs, Spencer Golub, Linda Gregerson, Kenneth Gross, Barbara Grossman, Atar Hadari, Kyna Hamill, James Harding, Dayton Haskin, William Hutchings, Coppélia Kahn, Katherine Kellett, Ric Knowles, Donna Kornhaber, David Krasner, Jill Lane, Steve and Ellen Levine, John Mahoney, Suzanne Matson, Cary Mazer, Bernadette Meyler , Andrés Pérez-Simón, Martin Puchner, Brendan Rapple, Alice Rayner, Charlotte Reiter, Christopher Ricks, Joseph Roach, David Roby, David Saltz, Catherine Schuler, Richard Schoch, Mike Sell, Laurence Senelick, Jennifer Sinor, P. A. Skantze, Michael Sowder, Matthew Wilson Smith, Enrique Urueta, Adam Vines, Elizabeth Kowaleski Wallace, Don Weingust , Chris Wilson, Christina Woodworth, W. B. Worthen, Harvey Young, Kevin Young, and Ted Ziter. The participants in my 2001 San Diego American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) seminar Materialism and the Material helped me conceptualize this project at an early stage: Rhonda Blair, Chase Bringardner, Donnalee Dox, Jon Erickson, F. Elizabeth Hart, Kimberly Jannarone, Peter Novack, James Peck, Nicholas Ridout, and Matthew Wagner. My graduate students in the seminars Performance and Representation, What Is Performance ?, and Beckett on Stage and Screen asked all the right questions and deepened my understanding of this material. I thank my wonderful col- x • Acknowledgments leagues in Boston College’s English Department and Dean David Quigley. Special thanks are due to LeAnn Fields, for her patience and faith in this project, and to the University of Michigan Press and its outside readers. Kerry Burke and Michael Swanson at Boston College Media Technology Services assisted with the images. Ellen Kaplan-Maxfield provided the index. For inviting me to present some of the material that follows, I thank the University of Michigan’s Arthur Miller International Symposium, Boston College English Department’s Graduate Colloquium, Harvard University’s Shakespeare Studies Seminar, Tufts University’s Department of Drama and Dance, Loyola University Chicago’s McElroy Shakespeare Celebration, Northwestern University’s Interdisciplinary PhD Program in Theatre and Drama, the Southeastern Theatre Conference Theatre Symposium , and the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Department of English . Thanks also to ASTR; the Association for Theatre in Higher Education ; the Mellon School of Theater and Performance Research at Harvard University; and the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers. Versions of chapters 1, 4, and 5 appeared in Theatre Journal, Modern Drama, and Arthur Miller’s America: Theater and Culture in a Time of Change, ed. Enoch Brater (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005). Sections of my introduction appeared in Theatre Journal under the title “Spectral Readings.” I am grateful for the editors’ permission to reprint this material. My brother, Paul Sofer, and mother, Elaine Sofer, died during the writing of this book. Their intellectual and creative spirit continues to inform everything that I write. Loving thanks, as always, to Bonnie Tenneriello and Julian Sofer. This book is dedicated to my teacher and mentor, Enoch Brater, who continues to inspire. ...

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