Spectrality in the Novels of Toni Morrison

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments I have many people to thank, even beyond those mentioned here. This project began as my dissertation at the University of Mississippi, and during those early stages, the J. L. and Diane Holloway Dissertation Fellowship provided a respite from teaching and greatly expedited the writing process. For reading drafts of this work, I first need to thank my former committee members at the University of Mississippi: Annette Trefzer, Ethel Young-Minor, Benjamin F. Fisher, and Kirsten Dellinger. In particular, I am grateful to Professors Fisher,Trefzer, and Young-Minor for their encouragement from my original seeds of thought about spectrality and hauntings to this project. In northern Kentucky and in Oxford, Mississippi, I have been blessed with excellent groups of friends who have been supportive and inspirational. Among those, individuals who have provided feedback on drafts of this manuscript include Jeff Stayton, Gray Kane, Lisa Kröger, Lorraine Dubuisson, Travis Montgomery, Matt Saye, Pip Gordon, Michaela St. John, and Bethany Miller. I also wish to thank the readers engaged by the University of Tennessee Press for their incisive comments on the manuscript. I have presented this material in various stages at several academic conferences , and the feedback from those gatherings has been valuable. These conferences include meetings of the Toni Morrison Society, the American Literature Association, the South Central Modern Language Association, the Society for the Study of Southern Literature, and the Mississippi Philological Association. My students have helped to sharpen my thinking on Morrison’s work when I have had the opportunity to teach it, and I have especially valued the discussions of Beloved in my haunted literature classes. This list would not be complete if I did not acknowledge the ­ people who influenced the course of my life toward academe. When I was an undergraduate at Thomas More College, James Schuttemeyer introduced me to the work of Toni Morrison through Song of Solomon; Sherry Cook Stanforth assigned Beloved in a memorable “American Novels” class; and Sister Colleen Dillon served spectacularly in her roles as teacher and ­ advisor. x Acknowledgments Even though I met them well before even the possibility of this project existed, their influence is apparent. Most important, I am deeply grateful to my family: Paul, Deborah, Stephanie, and Justin Anderson; my grandparents Earl and Aline Beil; and finally, my grandmother Helen Anderson, who unfortunately passed away during the writing of this book. They offered unconditional love and support throughout this process, and they put up with much rambling speculation about spectrality. Their patience and enthusiasm have kept me moving forward even when I began to question where I was going and then, if I figured that out, whether I would ever get there. Without them, I could not have ventured forth upon this journey and completed it. ...