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Acknowledgments
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Acknowledgments ‘‘There is no document of Civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism.’’ Walter Benjamin’s famous pronouncement is obviously true of museums. But it is also true, on a much smaller scale, of the process of writing a book. I am grateful to the many people who put up with my endless demands during the writing of this book: for books, money, time, advice. First, for their help in locating massive numbers of books and articles, I am grateful to the Interlibrary Loan staff at Eastern Illinois University’s Booth Library: Bradley Tolpannen, Sue Yocum, Jana Lawson, and Larry Auchstetter. Karen L. Whisler, Head of Collection Management Services, helped me in my efforts to track down arcane information and steadfastly advocated for faculty in the acquisition of new research tools. Thanks also to Andrea Johnston, graduate assistant extraordinaire, for the many hours she spent taking notes for me in the University of Illinois library. For help locating and gaining access to archival material in the United Kingdom, I am grateful to Gary Thorn and Bryony Leventhall of the British Museum Archives. Eastern Illinois University has provided me with time, money, and a stimulating collection of colleagues and students, all of which made this work possible. I am grateful to Eastern’s Council on Faculty Research for funding travel and summer research, and to the College of Arts and Humanities for two Travel Awards and two awards of reassigned time for research. Eastern also facilitated my writing through its study abroad program , which allowed me to live at Harlaxton College, the British campus of the University of Evansville, for two semesters while working on this book. Under the directorship of Jan Beckett, the library offered a warm (literally, x Acknowledgments which is important in a nineteenth-century manor house) and supportive working environment. The earliest stages of this book grew out of a National Endowment for the Humanities summer seminar directed by Martha Vicinus at the University of Michigan. That very thought-provoking seminar introduced me to the pleasures of archival research, and my seminar project, on fin de siècle Egyptology, triggered my interest in the turn-of-the-century museum . More recently, my Tuesday morning research group—Dagni Bredesen , Terri Fredrick, Christopher Hanlon, Jeannie Ludlow, Robin Murray, and Angela Vietto—has kept me focused, caffeinated, and laughing. To friends who read and responded to chapters—Susan Bazargan, Fern Kory, Janet Marquardt, David Raybin, Dana Ringuette, and Angela Vietto—I cannot begin to express my thanks. Anonymous readers for Feminist Studies and the University of Virginia Press provided helpful suggestions. I am grateful also to Cathie Brettschneider, Humanities Editor at the University of Virginia Press, for her support of this project, and to Colleen Romick Clark for her careful copyediting. For help obtaining images, I would like to thank Dennis Sears of the University of Illinois Rare Book Room, Beverly Cruse of Eastern Illinois’s Media Services, and Christopher Hanlon, whose computer expertise and good advice have been equally invaluable over the years. For help with administrative paperwork as well as her good humor in dealing with a department full of needy professors, I am grateful to Jean Toothman. Feminist Studies, the University of Toronto Press, and Victorian Literature and Culture generously granted permission to reprint material that appeared in their pages. Portions of chapters 5 and 6 appeared in Feminist Studies as ‘‘Women in the British Museum Reading Room during the LateNineteenth and Early-Twentieth Centuries: From Quasi to Counterpublic’’ (28 [Fall 2002]: 489–512; ∫ 2002 by Feminist Studies, Inc., reprinted with permission of the publisher) and as ‘‘A Thought in the Huge Bald Forehead : Depictions of Women in the British Museum Reading Room, 1857– 1929’’ in Reading Women, edited by Janet Badia and Jennifer Phegley (∫ 2005 University of Toronto Press, reprinted with permission of the publisher ). Part of chapter 3 appeared as ‘‘In Quest of a Museal Aura: Turn of the Century Narratives about Museum-Displayed Objects’’ in Victorian Literature and Culture (31, no. 2 [2003]: 457–82; ∫ 2003 Cambridge University Press, reprinted with permission of the publisher). I am grateful to the National Portrait Gallery for permission to publish a passage from a draft in [52.91.54.203] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 05:54 GMT) Acknowledgments xi the National Portrait Gallery Warding and Security Staff Records, Duty Reports, 1895–1921 (ref. no.: NPG82/2/2, NPG Archive), and to the following organizations for permission to reproduce images: the Trustees...