Catanese - Theater

I am very honored to have been the beneficiary of all of the support that has led to the publication of this book. Friends and family, mentors, colleagues, and students have all shaped this book, and in the process, have shaped me as well. It is a humbling privilege to begin the act of thanking them with this list of acknowledgments.

I must begin by recognizing mentors who nurtured these ideas in their earliest forms: at UC Berkeley, Saidiya Hartman, Barbara Christian, Margaret Wilkerson, David McCandless, and Dunbar Ogden planted the seeds that prepared me to avail myself of the support and encouragement of Harry Elam, Peggy Phelan, Alice Rayner, and Helen Brooks during my time at Stanford University. Upon my return to Berkeley, institutional support from both the Humanities Research Fellowship and UC Berkeley's Office of Faculty Equity provided time and a room (and laptop) of my own in which to achieve major work on this project. Funds from the Mellon Foundation made its completion possible. My colleagues in the departments of African American Studies and Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies at UC Berkeley have been constant sources of inspiration and support. I offer overarching thanks to all of my faculty and staff colleagues in both departments. I offer special thanks to W. B. Worthen, Charles Henry, and Percy Hintzen for their leadership at the time of my arrival at Berkeley, and to Mark Griffith, Shannon Jackson, Catherine Cole, Ula Taylor, and Stephen Small for their leadership and guidance in subsequent years. I am grateful to each of them for the ways in which they have encouraged my work, and I also appreciate the support of colleagues including Peter Glazer, Leigh Raiford, and Shannon Steen, who responded to my work at various stages throughout this journey. I am exceedingly thankful for the critical and personal generosity they have bestowed upon me. I have tremendous respect and appreciation for the graduate and undergraduate students that I have had the privilege of teaching at UC Berkeley, whose courage, optimism, and dazzling intelligencehave influenced my thinking in ways that keep me grounded in my reasons for pursuing a life in this profession.

I am also grateful to a broader web of colleagues who have worked directly and indirectly to support me and this work at various stages: they include Patrick Anderson; Stephanie Batiste; Annemarie Bean; Hershini Bhana; the far-flung members of the Black Performance Theory group; Jennifer Devere Brody; Daphne Brooks; Telory Davies; Tommy DeFrantz; Michele Elam; the other members of the Fab Five cohort: Faedra Carpenter, Shawn Kairschner, Jisha Menon, and Zack; Kathleen Frydl; E. Patrick Johnson; Dwight McBride; Heather Nathans; Elizabeth Nordt; Sandra Richards; Joseph Roach; David Romn; Maya Roth; Scott Saul; Arden Thomas; Bryan Wagner; Stacy Wolf; and Harvey Young. The forced periods of isolation that the practice of writing requires were sweetly healed by the fellowship that these scholars and others have offered over the years.

At the University of Michigan Press I have benefited from a level of care, patience, and engagement that begins with the support of the incomparable LeAnn Fields, whose patience and enthusiasm for this project have sustained me on many occasions. Additionally, while I only know to acknowledge Scott Ham and Marcia LaBrenz by name, I offer thanks to the entire staff at the press whose help has gone into making the publication of this book possible. Additionally, while the shortcomings of this book are my own, it has benefited tremendously from feedback during the peer review process, and from the editorial wisdom and encouragement of David Krasner and Rebecca Schneider.

Finally, I offer my deepest thanks to my family, the people who have offered me unconditional love during the immediate process of writing this book, and in so many other ways. My parents, Robert and Vicki Wilkins, have been unerring in their support of my development as a person and as a scholar. I am sure that I will never fully comprehend all that they have done to make the life that I enjoy today possible, but I thank them for their fierce love and the values that they instilled in me. I cherish my brother and sister, Rob and Courtney, for the joy that they have brought into my life and all of the ways that they make me proud to be their big sister. I honor my grandparents, LaVada Wilson and Rose and Leroy Lawson, for the examples of hard work, commitment, and love of family that they have shown to future generations. I thank the entire Catanese family for welcoming me so wholeheartedly into their lives and rituals, and my extended family of aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends-as-family (including my favorite armchair cultural critic Christina Royal, with whom I have thought through more than one of the ideas in this book) for giving me a robust and joyful life that helps me to keep the vagaries of work in perspective.