Reclaiming Nostalgia: Longing for Nature in American Literature

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments I am grateful to the following organizations for supporting this project: the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities at the University of Washington, Creighton University, the Fulbright Scholar Program, the University of Bergen, the University of Idaho, and the University of Virginia Press. I would also like to thank Kate Cummings, for being, by all accounts, the most dedicated graduate student mentor one could ask for; Caroline Simpson, Carolyn Allen, and Linda Nash, for offering constructive insights about my dissertation; Kathleen Woodward, Miriam Bartha, Brian Reed, David Shields, and the other Simpson Center fellows, for providing provocative suggestions on chapter 4; Bridget Keegan, for being a motivating friend, mentor, editor, and running partner; John Tallmadge, for offering generous and thoughtful readings of my manuscript ; the anonymous second reader, for doing the same; Michael Branch, for encouraging me through long-distance mentoring; Cathie Brettschneider, Ellen Satrom, and the University of Virginia Press editorial staff, for seeing the project through to publication; and Doug Heckman , for giving me the love and support that allowed me to finish this. Thanks, too, to the many other colleagues, students, and academic acquaintances who have contributed in large and small ways to this project , especially Kathy Aiken, Gary Williams, David Sigler, Donna Haraway , Sarah Franklin, John Su, Lawrence Buell, Lance Newman, Amy Vidali, Jill Gatlin, Ron Steffens, Greg Zacharias, Nina Ha, Krystal Kirwan , T. J. Mullaney, and Erin Herrmann. Finally, thanks to all the cafés xvi / ACKNOWLEDGMENTS that have hosted me and my laptop, especially Java Bean and Top Pot in Seattle, Blue Line in Omaha, and One World Café in Moscow. Portions of the introduction and chapter 1 were published as “Longing for Wonderland: Nostalgia for Nature in Post-Frontier America,” Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies (Fall 2004). Selections of chapter 5 appear in “‘Local Yearnings’: Re-Placing Nostalgia in Don DeLillo’s Underworld,” Journal of Ecocriticism (January 2010). Reclaiming Nostalgia ...