Acknowledgments

Books are rarely born out of solitary endeavors. Fellow travelers in the academy and in my life offered inspiration, guidance, encouragement, and the gift of productive criticism to coax its passage into the world. To name them all would tax the constraints of this genre, but I am thankful that they are many. I am particularly grateful to Parama Roy and an anonymous reader for the University of Minnesota Press for their incisive comments and helpful suggestions. Parama Roy’s work on intercultural traffic and the somatic body has been enormously generative for my thinking, and her rigorous but generous criticism has made this book both richer and clearer.

Among the scholars who offered critical stimulus or inspiration are Bill Ashcroft, Simona Bertacco, Munia Bhaumik, Elleke Boehmer, Renate Brosch, Carol Colatrella, Rick Denton, Laura Doyle, Joyce Flueckiger, Carla Freeman, Ralph Gilbert, Walter Goebel, Angie Heo, Geraldine Higgins, Abdul JanMohamed, Birgit Kaiser, Ivan Karp, Corinne Kratz, Scott Kugle, Ruby Lal, Vinay Lal, Valérie Loichot, Vijay Mishra, Judith Misrahi-Barak, Mary Odem, Gyan Pandey, Mitali Pati, Laurie Patton, Sandra Ponzanesi, José Quiroga, Velcheru Narayan Rao, Sangeeta Ray, Saskia Schabio, Henry Schwarz, Nathan Suhr-Sytsma, Harish Trivedi, George Yancy, and Robert Young.

For their unsurpassed collegiality, I thank Angelika Bammer, Geoffrey Bennington, Pat Cahill, Mikhail Epstein, Rosemarie Garland-Thompson, Elena Glazov-Corrigan, Elizabeth Goodstein, Larry Jackson, John Johnston, Walter Kalaidjian, Barbara Ladd, Elissa Marder, Jim Morey, Laura Otis, Walt Reed, Benjamin Reiss, Jill Robbins, Joseph Skibell, Natasha Tretheway, Deborah White, and Kevin Young, my colleagues in English and in comparative literature.

A vibrant group of students—Namita Goswami, Stephanie Iasiello, Rebecca Kumar, Roopika Risam, Caroline Schwenz, Molly Slavin, and Jennifer Yusin, among others—lent their vivid intelligence in classes and in conversations. I would like them to know how formative for my thinking their participation in the teaching process has been.

I am extremely grateful for the institutional support I received while writing this book. A semester’s teaching leave from the University Research Commission allowed me to begin my explorations through intensive reading. Lectures at the Emory Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture convened by Professor Robert McCauley and participation in the Gustafson Seminar on Race (2009–2010) stimulated my thinking. Dean Robin Forman generously supported the completion of this project, while Dean Elliott consistently provided intellectual engagement and support. My year at the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry as a senior fellow, with Martine Brownley as benevolent director (and rigorous taskmaster), granted me the structure, space, and intellectual fellowship without which this project could not have grown or come to fruition.

Special thanks are due to Danielle Kasprzak, the best of editors, and to Anne Carter at the University of Minnesota Press.

Versions of several chapters were tested on generous and helpful colleagues at Appalachian State University, Claflin University (National Endowment for the Humanities Lecture Series), Delhi University, the University of Louisville, Oxford University, the University of Stuttgart, the University of Tampa, the University of Utrecht, the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and the Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research, Texas A&M University. Closer to home, a vibrant group of colleagues and students in the Program for Global and Postcolonial Studies and in the South Asia Seminar Series at Emory engaged wholeheartedly with my work and helped to refine my ideas.

Finally, thanks to my late parents, Kushal and Sudarshan Bahri, whose love of literature bred mine.