The Mediating Nation: Late American Realism, Globalization, and the Progressive State

Acknowledgments

ix Acknowledgments One of the chief pleasures of undertaking research is having the opportunity to share ideas with—and allow those ideas to take shape in conversation with—colleagues, both near and far. I am fortunate that my most enthusiastic interlocutors are also the nearest: those I see on an almost daily basis at Florida International University. I am particularly grateful for the discerning comments and questions of Steven Blevins and Jason Pearl, who between them have read nearly every part of this book as it was being written. I am also grateful to Vernon Dickson, Paul Feigenbaum, Michael Gillespie, Bruce Harvey, Ana Luszczynska, Phillip Marcus, Asher Milbauer, Carmela Pinto McIntire, Meri-Jane Rochelson, Heather Russell, and Andrew Strycharski for their willingness to respond to requests for all sorts of advice, ranging from the conceptual to the mundane. Across town, at the University of Miami, John Funchion, Joel Nickels, and Tim Watson have served as sounding-boards on multiple occasions, providing valuable feedback at important junctures in this project’s history. Farther afield, Carrie Tirado Bramen, James Taylor Carson, Keri Holt, Johannes Lang, David Luis-Brown, Walter Benn Michaels, Donald Pease, Yvette Piggush, and Sylvia Söderlind have helped me to articulate the aims and claims of this book more clearly by asking thoughtful questions or by making judicious recommendations. I appreciate their generosity and goodwill. For providing material support for my research in the form of a Summer Faculty Development Award, I thank FIU’s College of Arts and Sciences. I also thank James Sutton, my department’s chairperson, for his unwavering support of my research, which has manifested itself in a course release and in steady funding for travel to conferences as well as in his general commitment to advocating for junior faculty. I continue to owe a debt of gratitude—I always shall—to my mentors at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for modeling the kind and quality of scholarship and teaching that I strive to achieve. Jane Thrailkill in particular inspires me not only because of her knowledge, professionalism , and scholarly acumen, but also because of her long-term investment in each of her students. I am the beneficiary of such an investment. And x Acknowledgments while it has taken several years for the ideas to gestate fully, I can trace my thinking about some of the problems that this book explores back to speci fic conversations with Tyler Curtain, Michael Hunt, Joy Kasson, Timothy Marr, and John McGowan. Working with the University of North Carolina Press has been an extremely rewarding experience. Mark Simpson-Vos is as patient, perceptive, and encouraging an editor as any author could hope for, and he has a knack for providing the right sort of guidance at exactly the right time. Cait BellButter field, Susan Garrett, Ron Maner, and John Wilson have carefully and cheerfully shepherded my manuscript through its later stages. The finished book also benefits greatly from the insightful and practical recommendations of two anonymous but very engaged readers. Portions of chapter 1 appeared in an earlier form in the edited collection American Exceptionalisms: From Winthrop to Winfrey (2011); I am grateful to SUNY Press for permission to reprint that material here. I am also grateful to the Bridgeman Art Library for helping me obtain the illustration that appears in chapter 4 and to International Publishers for assisting me with information about the introduction’s epigraph. I reserve my deepest appreciation for my family and friends, who have provided the less tangible but no less crucial emotional support that has sustained me throughout this project. My parents, Bill and Connie Cadle, instilled in me a love for the printed word, and they remain a welcome and encouraging presence in my life. My brothers, Neil Cadle and Patrick Cadle, are informed readers who are almost as fascinated by the period I study as I am. Some of their astute observations have made their way into this book, and their good humor has helped to keep me grounded. More than anyone else, however, it is Dulce María Escobio who has lived the longest with The Mediating Nation and who has been its most ardent champion. Her faith in this project—and in me—has been the strongest motivation and the most meaningful reward for completing it. The Mediating Nation This page intentionally left blank ...