Academic Lives: Memoir, Cultural Theory, and the University Today

Acknowledgments

AcknowLedgments If in this book on academic memoir there is any place where I most directly write my own, it is here, in this space set aside to acknowledge my own institutional location and the experiences and the deep attachments without which this book would not exist. My dean, Joe O’Mealy, has been the source not only of a superb wit but also of funding, and I thank him for supporting me with research and travel money. This project has been strengthened by responses from audiences at the following conferences: the American Studies Association (ASA), the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS), the International Narrative Conference, the Modern Language Association (MLA), the Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature (MELUS), the Pacific Rim Conference on Disabilities, and by audiences at the University of Hawai‘i (in particular the International Cultural Studies Certificate Program and the Women’s Studies Colloquium Series). So, too, students in graduate courses in American studies, cultural studies, and in my graduate and upper-division courses on memoir have helped me formulate ideas that appear in this book; I’d particularly like to thank Carlo Arreglo, Donna Tanigawa, and Allison Yap. This project has spanned the life of two writing groups whose contributions have been immeasurable. Andrea Feeser, Laura Lyons, and Beth Tobin provided crucial guidance and encouragement through the beginning stages of this project, and Andrea and Beth have continued to be wonderful—and sorely missed and much loved—long-distance friends and colleagues. It is fitting that I was able to spend time with Beth and Joe Tobin in New York City while completing the final revisions to this book, where an unexpected gift of that visit was their expert editorial advice. The later stages of this project owe much to the collective and individual energies and insights of Monisha Das Gupta, Linda Lierheimer, Laura Lyons, Kieko Matteson, Naoko Shibusawa (first in her embodied presence and then, when calling from Providence, as an intrepid voice emanating from the speaker phone, surrounded by strawberries), and Mari Yoshihara. That the intellectual pleasure of these groups has been x acknowledgments seamless with the friendship and nourishment that they have offered is one of the profound pleasures of academic life and Academic Lives. Other friends, colleagues, and mentors have been invaluable interlocutors , and have provided insightful responses to the manuscript or to ideas in it: my thanks to Elizabeth Abel, Hosam Aboul-Ela, Gloria Anzaldúa, S. Charusheela, Tom Couser, Ann Cvetkovich, Marcus Daniel , Candace Fujikane, Anne Goldman, Sian Hunter, AnaLouise Keating , Satya Mohanty, Lauren Muller, Robert Perkinson, M. S. S. Pandian, Francesca Royster, Ann Russo, Susan Schweik, Theresa Tensuan, Pam Thoma, Gillian Whitlock, Rob Wilson, Jean Wyatt, and readers whose reports on the manuscript have been anonymous but extremely helpful. I could not ask for a better or more supportive editor than Erika Stevens , and I thank her for her enthusiasm and for her exacting eye. Working with her, Jon Davies, David Des Jardines, Jennifer Reichlin, and the other staff at the University of Georgia Press has been a true pleasure. This book also has benefited enormously from Deborah Oliver’s scrupulous copyediting. A number of friends deserve particular mention for sustaining me and my scholarship in often daily ways that cannot be disentangled. At Biography , Miriam Fuchs, Craig Howes, and Stan Schab not only have been a joy to work with, but also a constant source of encouragement, and their faith in this project has been of tremendous importance to me. Monica Ghosh was a source of pleasure and support as we walked the rises and falls of Mānoa Valley during a difficult year. Juliana Spahr responded to significant portions of this manuscript with insight and intelligence, and I thank her more generally for letting me know where the bottom line is in all things and also for assuring me that I will survive the experience and even manage to find it funny. My gratitude goes to Irene Tucker (Ms. Tuck) for a long and deep friendship, for loyalty and, on all the right occasions , outrage! I formulated many of the ideas put forth here—and received rejuvenating perspectives and friendship—hiking the ‘Aihualama Trail with Paul Lyons. I also have profited from his rapidly delivered, sometimes cranky, but always constructive and copious queries, generously given in response to so many sections of this manuscript. I am deeply grateful for love and support of all kinds from my fierce friend Monisha Das Gupta—be...