Acknowledgments

This book was long in the writing, which means that the number of people and institutions to whom thanks are owed increased incrementally into a long list. Inevitably I will forget someone, for which I apologize in advance. It has been a pleasure to work with editor Danielle Kasprzak at the University of Minnesota Press, who has supported me with enthusiasm. Cherene Holland’s careful and engaged reading of the text as copyeditor not only caught a number of errors and smoothed out infelicitous prose, but offered insights and cheering notes of support. Any errors that remain are definitely my own. Dialogue has been one of the most important factors in developing my ideas: in the spring of 2000, Susanna Egan and colleagues at the University of British Columbia organized a conference on autobiography, where I presented the tiny germ of the idea for this book and met with encouragement. Thus I began, and I continued to receive encouragement from Craig Howe at Biography, who invited me to serve as a guest editor for a special issue of the journal on the topic of autobiography and film. This led to my acquaintance with some fine scholars in the field, including Miriam Fuchs, Jason Sperb, Julia Codell, and Garrett Stewart. Efrén Cuevas Álvarez of the University of Navarra wrote an article for that issue and published a Spanish-language version of part of my actor chapter in the journal he edits, Comunicación y Sociedad. He and his colleague, Marta Frago Pérez, invited me to give a lecture on aspects of this study in Pamplona. Julia Watson, autobiography theorist and Ohio State colleague, provided much-needed support and advice at a critical juncture. The circle of conversation partners also included Swedish Bergman experts Birgitta Steene and Maaret Koskinen; graduate research assistant Anna Westerståhl Stenport; thesis advisee Jon Walker; members of the Townsend Center for the Humanities working group Shannon Jackson, Alan Tansman, and David Bates; and, very importantly, study-buddy Karl Britto. During the final year of writing, I was fortunate to receive funding from the Institute of International Studies for a “mini-conference.” In this program, faculty authors are given support to organize a day-long seminar with two outside experts and a group of local faculty, and this seminar proved invaluable to me. Tom Gunning of the University of Chicago and Dan Morgan of the University of Pittsburgh were my generous and insightful outside experts, and they were joined in conversation by Berkeley faculty members Marilyn Fabe, Miryam Sas, graduate student Ben Bigelow, and my colleagues and friends from the Scandinavian Department at the University of California, Berkeley: Mark Sandberg and Karin Sanders.

I have enjoyed extraordinary support from my highly collegial and supportive home department, faculty, staff, and students, for which I am grateful. Funding from the Barbro Osher Chair for the Department of Scandinavian has made a huge difference in my ability to complete research, and Barbro Osher is a good friend of the department in many ways. My son, Hank, provided me with the day-to-day joy and entertainment that made writing possible. And without the help of my husband and partner-in-writing, Ulf Olsson, I would never have made it to the finish line. Tack, käraste.