Rhetoric in American Anthropology: Gender, Genre, and Science

Acknowledgments

ix Acknowledgments ITSEEMSespeciallyappropriatetobeginthisbookaboutdisciplinarypractices in a professional community by recognizing the generous communities of scholars, mentors, colleagues, and friends who have sustained me throughout this project. First, Jane Danielewicz and Jordynn Jack have provided for years precisely the kind of mentorship I hope to offer my own students, challenging and encouraging me in equal measures, and offering generous support while trusting me to pursue my own interests to their best ends. Jane and Jordynn, along with Erika Lindemann, Valerie Lambert, and my two earliest mentors, Claudia Brown and Carol Rutz, have together forged a community of women intellectuals who have inspired me across all the stages of my education. The ideas in this book have also been improved by a generous community of colleagues at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) and elsewhere. My writing group, who knows my writing habits—my love of dashes, my overuse of pairs—better than anyone else, deserves more than half the credit for any good idea I ever have. I want to express my deepest appreciation to Erin Branch, Heather Branstetter, Sarah Hallenbeck, and Chelsea Redeker, whose intelligence has made my writing life a joy and whose friendship has sustained and energized me for years. Thanks are due as well to my anthropologist friend Tom Guthrie, who provided feedback on portions of the manuscript. Several of my colleagues at UNCG also provided feedback on the manuscript, and many more have engaged me in conversations that have stretched and clarified my thinking; I am indebted especially to Claudia Cabello-Hutt, Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater, Michelle Dowd, Jennifer Feather, Holly Goddard Jones, Jennifer Keith, Cybelle McFadden, Christian Moraru, Nancy Myers, Mark Rifkin, Kelly Ritter, David Roderick, Hepsie Roskelly, Amy Vines, and Stephen Yarbrough. Long-standing conversations with friends and colleagues in genre studies and in feminist historiography, especially Dylan Dryer, Jessica Enoch, Melanie Kill, Valerie Kinsey, Sharon Kirsch, Whitney Myers, and Lindsay Rose Russell, have improved this project and made this field a most congenial intellectual home. I am indebted to Josh Shanholtzer and to the excellent production and marketing staff at the University of Pittsburgh Press, who together guided this project through the process of publication with enormous thoughtfulness and generosity, and to two reviewers who offered incisive suggestions for revision that improved both this book and my thinking in important ways. I benefited enormously from the help of many archivists and librarians over the course of this project. I would particularly like to thank Inga Calvin, curator of the Ann Axtell Morris and Elizabeth Ann Morris Family Papers, for her generous assistance over several years, and the librarians at the National Anthropological Archives in Washington, D.C. and the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia. This research was supported by a Thomas S. and Caroline H. Royster Jr. Fellowship from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a Dissertation Fellowship from the Department of English at UNC Chapel Hill, a New Faculty Research Grant and a Summer Excellence Research Grant from UNCG, and a Mark Friedlaender Faculty Excellence Award from the Department of English at UNCG. Long-standing debts are owed to my remarkable family and to the dear friends whose support, humor, and love have provided the shape to my life. Leslie Eager, Kelly Ross, Autumn Eakin, and Jillian Ball have shared countless meals, movies, books, and conversations with me over the years, ensuring that my work could never become my only occupation. My mother, Joy Maxine Sparks, is my model in every way; I owe every opportunity I have had in my life to her curiosity, creativity, and warmth. To Dakota, Chenoa, Robert, and Avery, and to Mary, Dick, Thomas, and Andrew, I extend my deepest gratitude for your encouragement, generosity, and humor. Finally, I happily thank Matthew Loyd, the best partner, sharpest thinker, and dearest friend I can imagine, for his magical ability to make each day and every year better than the one before. x – Acknowledgements Rhetoric in American Anthropology ...