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Acknowledgments For their early support, I am grateful to my teachers and mentors at the University of Illinois at Chicago: Clark Hulse, Peggy McCracken, James Sosnoski, Michael Lieb, and Donald Marshall. The Department of English at Florida Atlantic University provided me the time and encouragement so essential to this project. James Peltz, Kelli Williams, and the SUNY Press staff have guided this project through with understanding, good advice, and care. I’m especially grateful to my children, Lexie and Danny, for giving up part of their mother to the demands of scholarship. Love and thanks to my mother, Brigitte Caslav, who taught me compassion, and to my father, Peter Caslav, who has the soul of a writer. Finally, thanks to Dan Cook for frequent talks about Bruce Springsteen and assorted other (less important) matters that afforded me many hours of happy distraction. Portions of chapter 3 were adapted from “Outside-In: Body, Mind, and Self in the Advertisement of Aesthetic Surgery,” which appeared in the Journal of Popular Culture 35.3 (Winter 2001). Portions of the introduction and chapter 1 were adapted from “Abject Criticism,” which appeared in Genders 32 (2000). ix ...

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