Acknowledgments

Only by recovering repressed memories and forgotten citizens, this book argues, can the construct of America achieve realization of the challenging plenitude and differences in its national narrative. Thus genealogical investigation—a methodology devoted to examining sites of erasure and displacement—has tremendous importance here, and yet this book would only repeat the same myopic elisions and tragic disavowals that mark American narrative if I did not begin with an attempt to record another genealogy, remembering those people who gave so much to the ideas and spirit of this project.

Anthony Barthelemy, S. Paige Baty, Peter Bellis, Bud Bynack, Peter Euben, Susan Gillman, Tassie Gwilliam, Catherine Judd, Doris Kretschmer, Maria Teresa Prendergast, Tom Prendergast, Forrest Robinson, John Paul Russo, Roz Spafford, Frank Stringfellow, and Ingrid Walker Fields all contributed generously, offering invaluable recommendations throughout all aspects of this book from suggesting titles to helping me clarify and enhance my thinking and writing. Their rich and different presences as teachers, friends, and colleagues can be found on every page.

This book grew out of my doctoral dissertation, and my advisors' insight, humor, and guidance continue to enliven my scholarship. John Schaar is an indispensable mentor, and without his incisive political imagination, I would never have been able to begin a conversation about freedom. I am grateful to Hayden White whose unceasing intellectual enthusiasm and patient demystifications helped me see my way through the intricacies of critical theory and this profession. I am indebted to Michael Cowan: his love of interpretation is infectious, and his friendship unique. His understandings of America sustained and enriched both this book and myself at every turn.

Donald Pease and Karen Sánchez-Eppler accorded this project remarkable readings. They challenged my argument and ideas not

merely as part of a scholarly exercise, but in ways invested with encouragement and thoughtfulness that helped make what I had given them so much better.

My research has been funded at important stages by grants from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and also by the Max Orovitz Summer Research Award at the University of Miami. An earlier version of chapter 4 appeared in American Literature 65 (September 1993),523–27 with the title "Radical Configurations of History in the Era of American Slavery."

Any genealogy of this book naturally takes me back to my parents, Michael and Frances Castronovo who, for long as I can remember, have been giving me their confidence and understanding. Lacking their abiding influence, I would never have put pen to paper.

My deepest thanks are to Leslie Bow—my toughest critic and my strongest supporter. She has bestowed upon me a love and respect that extend far beyond this project to touch other memories and other stories.