The Pedagogical Imagination: The Republican Legacy in Twenty-First-Century French Literature and Film

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments Many individuals have generously given of their time in reading and commenting on parts of this project at various stages of its development. I owe a debt of thanks to the following for sharing their insights and expertise: Ora Avni, Kim Benston, Stefan Bird-Pollan, Anna Bosch, Gil Chaitin, Jeffory Clymer, Isabelle Dellanoy, Andrea Goulet, Peter Kalliney, Ed Lee, Bettina Lerner, Suzanne Pucci, Marion Rust, Alan Singerman, Patricia Tilburg, and Michael Trask. My work has also benefited from conversations with a number of scholars more knowledgeable than I about the history and current state of French schooling, namely Myriam Boyer, Martine Jey, Pierre Kahn, and Hélène Merlin-Kajman. I am especially indebted to M. Martin Guiney, both because his own work on literary education in France has been a constant touchstone for my own inquiry and because his penetrating criticism of my manuscript has helped me to better define and frame my own contribution to this growing field among Anglophone students of French culture. I would also like to thank Patrick Bray and the French Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Bruno Chaouat and the French Department at the University of Minnesota for having invited me to present my work in their departments. I am grateful to Gaston and Mary-Elizabeth d’Harcourt, who repeatedly and warmly hosted me in Paris, where much of the research for this project was conducted. x | Acknowledgments Needless to say, I owe a debt of gratitude to those who read my manuscript for the University of Nebraska Press; their detailed and judicious comments provided indispensable guidance for improving the project. I am also grateful, of course, to Kristen Elias Rowley and Kyle Simonsen at the press for their able, cheerful, and steady stewarship through the publishing process. I am equally indebted to Jane Curran for her masterful editing of the manuscript. At the University of Kentucky, I have greatly benefited from many conversations with Richard Angelo, who not only read and commented on my work but also invited me to present my ideas in his department’s colloquium in the College of Education. Ted Fiedler, in my own department , meticulously read the entire manuscript and offered invaluable editorial advice at a crucial moment in the revision process. I also owe a debt to the University of Kentucky’s College of Arts and Sciences for providing me with a release from teaching duties in order to progress in my writing. There are no superlatives strong enough to convey the extent of my debt to my friend and colleague Jeff Peters, who not only tirelessly read and commented on many drafts of the entire manuscript but also maintained unflagging faith in the project even when I had my doubts. A remarkably creative thinker whose enthusiasm for the exchange of ideas and intellectual discovery is contagious, he persisted in challenging me to deepen and extend my arguments in ways that I could never have done on my own. My debt to him is immense. It is always difficult to articulate one’s debt to members of one’s own family, for their greatest assistance comes in intangible and very personal forms. I must nevertheless make explicit my gratitude to my mother and to my father for so readily and instinctually offering the kind of indispensable support that only family can provide. I owe a particular debt to my father, an accomplished wordsmith who, despite bemusement with the discourse of literary studies (beginning with words like discourse), has helped enliven my prose throughout. The most essential thanks is reserved for the person with whom I share everything. Pearl James, the best reader I know, has sweated every page, Acknowledgments | xi phrase, and word of this book along with me (while simultaneously writing her own to boot). More importantly, however, she and my daughter Chloe have reminded me every day, unwittingly and simply by being who they are, that there are things even more—much more—important. That reminder deserves my greatest thanks of all. ...