Trials of Arab Modernity: Literary Affects and the New Political

Acknowledgments

ac k now l e d g m e n t s This book is the outcome of hard work, perseverance, random encounters, encouragements, displacement, luck, love, and the kind of support that a junior faculty can only dream of. But my special thanks goes first to my editor, Helen Tartar, and to the editorial team at Fordham University Press; I’m grateful for the great work they’ve done. At the University of Texas at Austin, I would like to thank the Humanities Institute and its director, Pauline Strong, for providing the course release (Spring 2010) and the forum to work on the book. The Graduate School’s Summer Research Assignment (2010) and the College of Liberal Arts’ Research Assignment (Fall 2011) gave me the time to complete the manuscript. I thank Dean Randy Diehl and Associate Deans Richard Flores and Esther Raizen for their ongoing support. I’m also grateful to the generous subventions from the College, and from President Bill Powers, which made this publication possible. I thank my colleagues for their incredible support and generous feedback. I’m grateful to my chair and mentor Kristen Brustad, for giving me the space to write and for making the ground on which I walk firmer, every step of the way. I thank Mahmoud al-Batal for his generosity and motivation, and for taking the Mercedes out of the alley. I thank Kamran Aghaie for the wisdom and time, and for showing me the ropes. I’m indebted to Barbara Harlow for her generous mentorship; Yoav Di-Capua for the stimulating conversations and thorough feedback on the book proposal and Acknowledgments viii various chapters; Samer Ali for his feedback and encouragement; and Benjamin Brower for commenting on my work. I thank as well Hannah Wojciehowski, Geraldine Heng, and Wendy Moore for their feedback on my proposal and continued support. I also thank John Hartigan for inviting me to give a talk based on chapter 3, and Middle East librarian Roberta Dougherty for opening the gates of learning to us all. I’m also grateful to Elizabeth Richmond -Garza, Kamran Ali, Sofian Merabet, Karen Grumberg, Na’ama Pat-El, Faegheh Shirazi, Michael Johnson, Igor Siddiqui, Carl Mathews, and all those at the university who helped this project come to fruition. Special thanks go to my students—my current and future colleagues . I thank Zeina G. Halabi for her invaluable feedback on the chapters and for helping me keep it real at every level. I thank Angela Giordani for editing the manuscript and pushing me to make the argument pop at the end—the conclusion is dedicated to her. I also thank Benjamin Koerber, Drew Paul, Rachel Levine, Johanna Sellman, Michal Raizen, Katie Logan, and Anna Ziajka , including those who were in my travel narrative seminar in Spring 2009. Our discussions helped me shape the book’s argument and provided me with the excitement and the passion to go on writing. I owe a great deal to my teachers and colleagues at Cornell and to the intellectual environment of the Society for the Humanities. I’m deeply grateful to Natalie Melas, Jonathan Culler, Anne Berger, Emily Apter, Shawkat Toorawa, Dominick LaCapra, Geoffrey Waite, Milad Doueihi, and all those who have taught and inspired me in Ithaca. I also thank my teachers at the University of Rochester and American University of Beirut: Sharon Willis, Eva Geulen, Tom DiPierro, Tim Walters , John Michael, Seta Dadoyan, Mona Amyuni, Saleh Agha, Suzanne Kassab, Waddah Nasr, and Nadeem Naimy. What they taught me made its way into the book in various shapes and forms. I also would like to thank Hoda Barakat and Rashid alDaif for inspiring me through their friendship and brilliance to see the world in new ways. Acknowledgments ix I thank my interlocutor and dear friend Moneera al-Ghadeer, whose generosity and support are the not-so-secret ingredients of this book. Chapter 6 particularly benefited from feedback from David Damrosch and Sabry Hafez at a conference she organized at Qatar University in Spring 2010. I’m deeply grateful to John Borneman for the intellectual stimulation and infinite support, Mona Zaki for her warmth and insight, and William Granara for his feedback on the project and continued encouragement. I thank Muhsin al-Musawi for his guidance and vision, and for his generous invitations to the Arabic Seminar and other conferences at Columbia, which are creating the platform for new Arabic studies...