Collecting as Modernist Practice

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments The earliest thinking for this project began with the inspiration of two remarkable teachers, Phil Harper and Tim Morton. The work took shape under the brilliant guidance of Jean-Michel Rabaté, who first listened to my inchoate effusions about the Barnes Foundation and The New Negro (responding with “collecting!”) and then spent many hours in conversation with me as the project evolved. I am equally indebted to Susan Stewart, who has been an assiduous respondent and inspiring mentor from almost the beginning; it is impossible to think of a better reader for these pages. Jim English encouraged me to pursue questions of institutionality more thoroughly, advice that proved to be decisive as I revised and rewrote the manuscript. Michael Awkward , too, was a smart, perceptive reader. Many other teachers, colleagues, and friends in Philadelphia contributed to the intellectual life of this book: Bob Perelman, Margreta de Grazia, Michèle Richman, Vicki Mahaffey, Craig Saper, Ilan Sandler, Ben Austen, Kathy Lou Schultz, Tyler Smith, Gabriela Zoller, Hester Blum, and Martha Schoolman. My research was greatly aided by many archivists and librarians. I am happy to acknowledge the expertise of John Pollack and Dan Traister of the Rare Books and Manuscript Library at the University of Pennsylvania, Nancy Kuhl at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, James Maynard of the Poetry Collection at the University at Buffalo, Karen Schneider of the Phillips Collection, Katy Rawdon and Deborah Lenert of the Barnes Foundation, and Joellen El Bashir of the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University. In a similar spirit I thank Bruce Kellner, who provided guidance concerning the collection of Carl Van Vechten, and Suzanne Churchill, who helpfully answered questions about Alfred Kreymborg and Others. x Acknowledgments Since leaving Philadelphia, I have benefited from the challenging readings of new colleagues. I thank Evan Kindley, Crystal Bartolovich, Bill Solomon , Marlon Ross, Chris Raczkowski, Nick Jenkins, and Sean Shesgreen for their insights. I am grateful for conversations with Brent Edwards, Wanda Corn, Bill Maxwell, Janet Lyon, Pamela Smart, Hal Foster, Max Pensky, Jim Longenbach, Dan Blanton, and Guy Ortolano, among many others. Teaching for a year at Haverford College, I was lucky to have the collegial engagement of Gus Stadler, Tina Zwarg, Kim Benston, and Raji Mohan. And I am very thankful, too, for the support and advice of colleagues during my two years at Princeton, especially Daphne Brooks, Claudia Johnson, Valerie Smith, Diana Fuss, Ben Baer, Zahid Chaudhary, Meredith Martin, Oliver Arnold , and Jennifer Greeson. Before arriving at Haverford, I received a postdoctoral fellowship from the Cornell University Society for the Humanities. Grants from the English department and from the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University later provided important support during the project’s final stages, and the University’s Hull Memorial Publication Fund provided a subvention of the book’s production costs. To support the revision and expansion of this book, I received a year’s fellowship at the Stanford Humanities Center. Cornell University gave me additional support during my year of leave. My wonderful year at Stanford helped me to understand much more thoroughly what I had been working on all along, and I am enormously grateful to the staff of the center and to the other fellows, especially Ben Lazier, Jim Clifford, Paul Kiparsky, Liisa Malkki, Chris Rovee, and Gerry Bruns. During that year, I was fortunate also to participate in the Stanford Workshop in Poetics, organized by Roland Greene and Harris Feinsod. I thank them and the other participants of the seminar. At Stanford, Eric Messinger and Aaron Quiggle were valued research assistants . And at Cornell, Corinna Lee and Bernadette Guthrie helped me prepare the manuscript for publication. I have been very grateful for the support of my colleagues at Cornell. In particular, I wish to thank Dagmawi Woubshet, Sabine Haenni, Tim Murray , Molly Hite, Dan Schwartz, Roger Gilbert, Andy Galloway, Nick Salvato, Mary Pat Brady, Eric Cheyfitz, Medina Lasansky, Judith Peraino, Margo Crawford , Shirley Samuels, Camille Robcis, Dan Magaziner, and Jenny Mann, all of whom helpfully answered questions. Many of them also generously read parts of the manuscript and provided suggestions for revision. Acknowledgments xi At the Johns Hopkins University Press, Matt McAdam has worked tirelessly on behalf of this book: I give him my sincere thanks. I wish also to thank Jesse Matz, John Xiros Cooper, and one anonymous reader of the manuscript; each of them made suggestions that have greatly improved...