The Dream Life of Citizens: Late Victorian Novels and the Fantasy of the State

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments I have many people and institutions to thank for their support, inspiration, and generosity during the process of writing this book. First, my thanks go to Lauren Berlant, Elaine Hadley, and Elizabeth Helsinger for their advice and mentorship of this project in its dissertation stage and beyond. Hilary Strang has been an invaluable and untiring reader and interlocutor of this project in its many life forms. I am also grateful to Emily Barman, Jamie Franklin, Hana Layson, Mary Lass Stewart, and Carrie Yury for their encouragement and humor. At the University of Chicago, as a graduate student and later in the Society of Fellows, I benefited from the questions and comments of Samuel Baker, Katherine Biers, Homi Bhabha, Bill Brown, James Chandler, Virginia Chang, Andrew Hebard, Neville Hoad, Aeron Hunt, Benjamin Lazier, Saree Makdisi, Curtis Marez, Michael Milner, Michael Murrin, Steve Pincus, Lawrence Rothfield, Jonathan Sachs, Rebecca Zorach, and others to whom I apologize for not including them here. I also wish to thank my Michigan State University colleagues and friends, Jennifer Fay, Ellen Pollak, and Judith Stoddart, without whose incisive comments and advice the book would not have taken its final form. The (Im)Morrill Writing Group, Eng-Beng Lim, Lloyd Pratt, Karl Schoonover, and Jennifer Williams, kept me going through the final stages. Stephen Arch, Ilana Blumberg, Salah Hassan, Scott Juengel, Ellen McCallum, Scott Michaelsen, Justus Nieland, Patrick O’Donnell, and Robin Silbergleid helped me in crucial ways to complete this project. For his advice and friendship, I am indebted to Aimé Ellis, whose memory I cherish. Nancy Armstrong, Brian Aslami, Lauren Goodlad, Daniel Hack, Mary-Catherine Harrison, Ivan Krielkamp, Sarah Winter, and the reviewers of the manuscript helped me turn a manuscript into a book and a much better one than it might have been. I also wish to thank Helen Tartar at Fordham University Press, along with Thomas Lay, Eric Newman, and others at the Press who contributed their time and expertise to this project. vii viii Acknowledgments I have presented earlier, partial versions of the book’s chapters to the wonderfully helpful members of the Midwest Conference on British Studies , the National Conference on British Studies, the Midwest Victorian Studies Association, the North American Victorian Studies Association, and the Modern Language Association. Thanks go to the individuals in those audiences who asked me to clarify and refine my ideas. I also thank Derek Sayer and Yoke-Sum Wong for inviting me to the Oxford Discussion Group on the State. The International Studies & Programs, the College of Arts and Letters, and the Department of English at Michigan State funded my participation in that unique event. Financial support for this project also came in the form of the Rosenthal Foundation Dissertation Fellowship (The University of Chicago) and government -sponsored student loans. As a Harper Postdoctorate Fellow in the Society of Fellows (The University of Chicago), I received a teaching leave that enabled me to keep writing. Likewise, generous support in the form of teaching leaves from the Department of English at Michigan State allowed me to complete the manuscript. The Department of English and the College of Arts and Letters at Michigan State also provided a subsidy that aided the publishing process. Chapter 3 was previously published as ‘‘The Rise of the State as a Sympathetic Liberal Subject in Hardy’s The Woodlanders,’’ in Novel, Vol. 42, issue 1 (Spring 2009): 62–85. Copyright 2009, Novel, Inc. It is reprinted here by permission of the publisher, Duke University Press. An earlier version of Chapter 4 appeared in Victorian Studies vol. 47, issue 1 (Autumn 2004): 55– 85. Full credit is given to Indiana University Press as publisher. Thank you to the editors of these journals for all their work in bringing my writing to print and to the presses for allowing the inclusion of the materials here. Finally, I wish to thank Mark, Sadie, and Alexander. They know why. I dedicate this book to my parents, Janice and M. Azim Aslami, to whom, quite simply, I owe the greatest thanks. ...