Acknowledgments

I gratefully acknowledge writing this book at Western University situated on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabeg, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak, and Attawandaron peoples. Research for this book was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I thank my students from two graduate seminars on existential risk taught at Western’s Centre for Theory and Criticism in the winter of 2018 and winter of 2020. I learned so much from conversation on this book with my collaborator and cowriter Derek Woods, and from Nicole Shukin, Aaron Brindle, Jeremy Arnott, Julian Evans, Wil Patrick, Kate Stanley, Tilottama Rajan, Allan Pero, Glenn Willmott, Matthew Chrulew, Brett Buchanan, and Stephen Cave. It was a pleasure to have this book under the care of Eric Lundgren and the editorial and production team at University of Minnesota Press. I am deeply thankful for the support, love, and conversations with my parents Stewart and Bette Schuster, my brothers Justin and Jordan Schuster, and my home world of Marina, Reuven, and Raphael Schuster. Marina makes each day sweeter and more utopian.

—JOSHUA SCHUSTER

My portions of this book were written in Lebanon, New Hampshire, on the unceded lands of the Abenaki people, and in Vancouver, British Columbia, on the lands of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. My thanks to the Society of Fellows at Dartmouth College and the Department of English Language and Literatures at the University of British Columbia for their support. I’m also grateful to Yuriko Furuhata, Thomas Patrick Pringle, Yana Stainova, and Evan Morson-Glabik for conversations about the book. Thanks to Dr. Pringle and his students at the University of Chicago for a discussion of existential risk, and to Anne Pasek, Lisa Han, Amy Harris, and the participants of a very sweet pandemic reading group on Media and Environmental Risk. Thanks also to Nicole Shukin, who spoke on the initial panel that shaped this book, and to Eric Lundgren at the University of Minnesota Press. Huge thanks, finally, to my coauthor Joshua Schuster for inspiring this project, inviting me to his existential risk seminar at Western University, and teaching me so much along the way.

—DEREK WOODS