Beyond the Mother Tongue: The Postmonolingual Condition

Acknowledgments

ack n owledgments I am delighted to acknowledge the many people who have supported this project in different ways over the years. I have been extremely lucky to have Leslie A. Adelson as a mentor. Thoughtful and generous, she is a scholar of the highest standards and has been an ideal interlocutor in the evolution of this project. I am grateful to her for challenging me to become a better scholar in so many ways. Both Peter Uwe Hohendahl and Biddy Martin enriched this project with their expertise and their clear-sighted questions. Nancy K. Miller’s continued interest in my projects has meant a lot to me over the years. At Illinois, a wonderful group of friends and colleagues made the work on this book deeply enjoyable. Lilya Kaganovsky and Rob Rushing, in particular, provided support and nourishment of many kinds and have made Urbana truly a home, while being equally excellent travel companions. They and the incomparable Dara Goldman were insightful readers of earlier versions of this argument and willing sounding boards for new ideas. With their detailed and encouraging feedback, as well as their own inspiring work, the members of my writing group—Ericka Beckman, Ellen Moodie, and Anna Stenport—have been an indispensable part of the process. I treasure especially the additional, invaluable meetings with Ericka. For excellent questions, conversations, and leads, I am grateful to Matti Bunzl, Jon and Meredith Ebel, Jed Esty, Jim Hansen, Matt Hart, Brett Kaplan, Harriet Murav, Bruce Rosenstock , Manuel Rota, Nora Stoppino, and Renée Trilling. Acknowledgments x My colleagues in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Illinois warmly welcomed me. As department heads, Mara Wade and Harriet Murav freed me from commitments that allowed me to complete this book under ideal circumstances. I thank especially Laurie Johnson, Carl Niekerk, and Anke Pinkert for stimulating conversations and responses to my work. For research assistance, I thank Renata Fuchs, Regine Kroh, Molly Markin, and Dustin Smith. Their assistance and a much-needed research leave in the form of Humanities Released Time were made possible by the Campus Research Board of the University of Illinois. Earlier versions of three of the chapters in this book appeared in the journal Gegenwartsliteratur and in the collections Globalization and the Future of German and Yoko Tawada: Voices from Everywhere. I thank the editors of these publications for their support and feedback: Paul Michael Lützeler, Bernd Hüppauf and Andreas Gardt, and Doug Slaymaker. At Fordham University Press, Helen Tartar and Thomas Lay have been fantastic to work with. I want to especially acknowledge Helen’s role in establishing the Modern Language Initiative, which supports first-time book authors in non-Anglophone literatures with generous support by the Mellon Foundation. This book appears under the auspices of the initiative. Tom’s combination of enthusiasm and practical skills has made the entire process a great experience. I was especially gratified by the positive responses of Amir Eshel and B. Venkat Mani as well as by their insightful suggestions, which helped shape the final draft of the manuscript. Elsewhere, Beth Drenning and Neil Levi contributed much to this project as friends and keen intellectual thinkers. Beth brought Wordsearch to my attention and shared her copy of the catalogue with me. Neil provided helpful feedback on the Adorno chapter. Ute Bitzer, Jörg Bitzer, Bettina Brandt, Russ Castronovo, Rita Chin, Carola Hähnel-Mesnard, Dirk Moses, Anna Parkinson, Brad Prager, Kader Konuk, Matthew Lore, Barbara Mennel, Grit Schorch, Jennifer Uleman, and Karen Winkler supported this Acknowledgments xi process with much-appreciated practical advice and their open ears at important moments. Yoko Tawada has been an inspiration ; I have benefited from both her works and her conversation. The quatrolingualism of Andrés Nader, Agnès Benoît, Naima Nader, and Elias Nader have inspired this work immensely and filled it with multilingual pleasures. Esra Özyürek has been a much-valued interlocutor on things Turkish and German. I am glad that the dialogue with Necla Açık-Toprak and Umut Erel continues in our double migrations and triple languages, even if only intermittently. Und dann sind da die Cadıs, allen voran Şahinaz Akalın, Filiz Topal, Perihan Göktan, und Hamide Scheer. Ihr kritischer Blick, ihre Intelligenz, ihre Schlagfertigkeit und ihr unwiderstehlicher Stil werden für mich immer ein Maßstab bleiben. Lange Gespräche bei ausgiebigen Gelagen, in Cafés...