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Acknowledgments The very idea of writing acknowledgments is both exhilarating and daunting .This sort of work arises out of spaces and times populated by folks who will be remembered here and by persons who will be sadly overlooked. I begin, therefore, by asking for your empathy as I approach a task that cannot be adequately accomplished.To all those unnamed, I thank you. First, the lights shine on a group of persons who have sparked my imagination and set me off on productive paths. Michael J. Hyde has been generous beyond belief for opening up inspirational dwelling places and conversations . Earl Smith is a consistent and masterful mentor. Ever since we were classmates at Northwestern University, Kirt Wilson has been a great friend and even greater interlocutor.While on leave in 2004,I spent some extremely rewarding weeks visiting the University of Minnesota.I am very grateful to the faculty, staff, and graduate students of the Department of Communication Studies for a red-­ carpet welcome. In particular, I want to thank Karlyn Kohrs Campbell for her enduring generosity and Ronald Greene for reminding me of the power of the sublime.Speaking of helpful and timely prompts, many thanks to Christian Lundberg for bringing me back to the productive stresses of anxiety. My journey in scholarship has been aided in important ways by the influence of Martin Medhurst; his careful and insightful lessons regarding editing and writing over the years mark this writing. My present academic home, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has been supportive and rewarding. On nearly every level and in nearly every way, the faculty, staff, and graduate students have made the completion of this book a joyful adventure, punctuated by numerous occasions to sharpen and challenge my thinking about how to pull it off. Similarly, my previous home at Wake Forest University allowed me to come into contact with several graduate students who graciously endured my wander­ ing talks about the New Negro.I especially thank the students in a semi­ nar in African x / Acknowledgments Ameri­ can rhetoric where we produced pertinent rhe­ tori­ cal biographies of folks like Nella Larsen and Aaron Douglas. There are two chapters in this book that contain portions of works pre­ viously published elsewhere. I thank the University of Alabama Press for allowing the reproduction of parts of a chapter appearing in Public Modalities: Rhetoric,Culture,Media,and the Shape of Public Life, edited by Daniel C.Brouwer and Robert Asen. I also express appreciation to the University of South Carolina Press for granting the right to replicate in part a work appearing in Queering Public Address, edited by Charles Morris III. A book like this can be imagined as suddenly emerging in a flash of excitement, but in actuality it is manufactured out of the bits of words and documents housed in a number of archives and ordered by folks with seemingly endless patience. I am extremely grateful to the excellent staff at Howard University’s Moorland-­ Spingarn Research Center, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University,the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the NewYork Public Library; I am especially in debt to the Schomburg Center Scholar-­ in-­ Residence Program.I extend a hearty thank you to the archivists of the W. E. B. Du Bois Collection at the University of Massachusetts. And I offer a salute to the dedicated folks at the United States’ Library of Congress . Finally, I wish to acknowledge two former professors whose investments in me will forever push me toward whatever horizons I wish to bear my signature ; I will always be thankful for the tutelage of Thomas B. Farrell and Michael C. Leff. ...

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