Acknowledgments

Coralations emerged from a series of lectures I wrote for a seminar on “Coral Mediations” at the Summer School for Global Studies and Critical Theory at University of Bologna in July 2022, coorganized with Duke University and the University of Virginia. Thank you to Ranjana Khanna for the invitation to participate, to Antonio Schiavulli for his hospitality, and to the graduate students in the course: Ilaria Bonvicini, Stephen Borunda, Nicolaas Buitendag, Francesco Casales, Michael Cavuto, Mariachiara Ficarelli, Haley Elzsatz, Scott Erich, Archit Guha, Maria Molano, and Caio Santos. My thanks to Stefan Helmrich for sharing feedback on an early draft, to Colin Milburn for a helpful conversation about citizen science games, and to Erik Cordes for sharing expertise on deep-sea corals. I also want to acknowledge the students in my graduate course on “Ocean Mediations” during winter 2023, whose questions and contributions influenced my thought as I was working through the conceptual framing of this book: Nadia Ahmed, Olivia Bievenue, Henry Coburn, Mary Cook, Arushi Gupta, Becca Hamilton, Bridge McWaid, Robin Satori, Saide Singh, Gil Vitro, and Tinghao Zhou. Margaret Cohen brought Stacy Alaimo, Elizabeth Deloughrey, and myself into lively oceanic conversation at Stanford in April 2024, an early window to share the ideas in this book, for which I am grateful. I also appreciate the opportunity to speak about Coralations at the University of Hawaii, Manoa; the University of Toronto; the University of Richmond; and the EASLCE conference in Perpignan, France. Thank you to my editor at Minnesota Press, Leah Pennywark; copyeditor Michael Stoffel; and to an anonymous reader who contributed thoughtful suggestions on the manuscript.

Coralations is dedicated to my daughter Aurelia, who arrived just after I drafted this book. She is wondrous. I am grateful for the love and companionship of my partner, Ben Robbins, who kindly took the photograph in Figure 6. Thank you to my mom, Terry Jue, for everything—I understand now!—my sister, Lori Jue, and Theo the labrador. I like to think my dad, Rodney Jue, would have enjoyed the soft corals in this book. It truly takes a village: a special note of gratitude to my dear friend Alenda Chang, to my colleagues in the English Department and in Film and Media Studies at UCSB, and to those who checked in on us: Yanoula Athanassakis, Beata Belfield, Zach Blas, Jinita Bhulabhai, E. Cook, Mona Damluji and Jia-ching Chen, Ridhika Dhani, Jeremy Douglass and Holly Rushing, Bishnupriya Ghosh and Bhaskar Sarkar, Baron Haber, Heidi Amin-Hong, Jim Kearney and Emily Zinn, Lauren Pawlak, Mihai Putinar and family, Swati Rana, Daniel Reeve, Jennifer Rhee, Amrah Solomon, Jean Schultz, Kimberlee Uwate, Chris Walker, and many more who celebrated Aurelia’s arrival.