Fantasies of Identification: Disability, Gender, Race

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments A room of her own is a marvelous sanctuary for a writer, but even more necessary is the companionship and solidarity of other people. So many friends and colleagues have supported me through the many years of completing this project that no words I can write here can fully recognize the crucial role they have played. Every word in this book is a testimony to exquisite interdependence, and I am grateful to every person whose presence in my life enriched this work. At Oberlin College, Carol Lasser, Yopie Prins, Wendy Hesford, and Sandy Zagarell taught me how to write, read, and exist as a feminist scholar. More than anyone else, Barbara Helfgott Hyett helped me to find my poetic voice. At Cornell University, A. R. Ammons, Ken McLane, Robert Morgan, and Debra Fried taught me fine-tuning, while Nina Revoyr, Angela Bommarito, Nancy Kok, Jennifer Gilmore, Bethany Schneider, Katie-Louise Thomas, and Dana Luciano helped me survive Ithaca winters. Lisa Diamond and Judi Hilman became family in the best sense of the word, and Sarah McKibben brought the deliciousness of salads and the vigor of scholarship back into my life. Meanwhile Andi Gladstone, Anne McLaughlin, and the other women of the Ithaca Breast Cancer Alliance reminded me of the inseparability of activism, research, and writing and taught me not to fear my future. I had the tremendous good fortune to arrive at the University of California, Berkeley at the inception of its disability studies program, and over the next eight years I flourished in the company of brilliant viii / acknowledgments and outrageous crip scholar-artist-activists like Georgina Kleege, Marsha Saxton, Devva Kasnitz, Neil Marcus, Anne Finger, Cathy Kudlick, Corbett O’Toole, the late Paul Longmore, and many others. I owe more than I can say to Sue Schweik for guiding me through those years and beyond as the most generous mentor and friend anyone could hope for. Sam Otter opened my eyes to the rigorous joys of nineteenth-century American literature, while Ula Taylor kept me honest and attentive to the many intersecting meanings of race and disability. In seminars and exams and in the hallways of the department, Celeste Langan, James Turner, Cathy Gallagher, Colleen Lye, Hertha D. Sweet Wong, Bryan Wagner, and Patricia Penn Hilden taught me to be a thorough and irreverent researcher and writer, while Len von Morzé, Gretchen Case, Marja Mogk, and Anna Mollow helped keep the ground level under our collective feet. Since coming to the University of Wisconsin, I have discovered the joys of belonging to two academic departments in which respect is combined with incisive thinking and a good dose of humor. In the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, I am grateful for the support and mentorship of Judith Leavitt, Janet Hyde, Frieda High Tesfagorgis, Lynet Uttal, Nancy Kaiser, Aili Tripp, Jane Schulenberg, Mariamne Whatley, Nancy Worcester, Jill Casid, and especially Christina Ewig, Judy Houck, Finn Enke, Cyrena Pondrom, Julie D’Acci, and Jane Collins. My compatriots and companions in this journey, Pernille Ipsen, Keisha Lindsay, Jenny Higgins, and Chris Garlough, are the wisest and most generous colleagues anyone could wish for, and throw a mean dance party to boot. In the English Department, I rely upon Russ Castronovo, David Zimmerman , and Jeff Steele to keep me current with the tides of American literary studies, and Christa Olson, Jordan Zweck, Colin Gillis, Aida Hussen, Lisa Cooper, Timothy Yu, and Robin Valenza to bring happiness at the appropriate hours. Susan Stanford Friedman told me hard and necessary truths about writing a book, and this project is immeasurably better for her guidance. Elizabeth Bearden arrived just in time to teach me everything I needed to know about tenure dossiers, swordcraft, and graceful recoveries. My senior colleagues Lynn Keller, Susan Bernstein, Sara Guyer, Leslie Bow, Anja Wanner, Rob Nixon, Anne McClintock, and Karen Britland have been generous with their time, support, and words of wisdom. At UW, I have also been lucky in the friendship and intellectual companionship of Linn Posey-Maddox, Christie ClarkPujara , Steve Kantrowitz, Nan Enstad, and Karma Chávez. Tom Jones acknowledgments / ix contributed his art, his insight, and his sympathetic ear at a crucial stage in this project, for which I am deeply grateful. It has been my tremendous luck to participate in the UW Disability Studies Initiative with Walt Schalick and Teryl Dobbs as colleagues, and Steve Stern and Cathy Trueba as our guardian...