A book that has been many years in the making owes more debts than acknowledgments can repay. I can only express the deepest gratitude to those who have been a constant source of inspiration and support at every stage of the book’s development. At the most basic level, this book is an extension of the ongoing conversation about avant-garde cultures that I have been having with Mike Sell for more than a decade and a half. I hope that it makes a valuable contribution to his vision of something called “Critical Vanguard Studies.” Over the course of writing this book, I have also co-edited two anthologies with Cindy Rosenthal. As rewarding as those collaborations have been in their own right, they also cultivated the kind of deep professional friendship that allowed for open and honest discussion of almost every chapter in this book. Cindy has offered insightful and supportive commentary more times than I can count. So too has my partner, Friederike Eigler, who has influenced this book as much as any other friend or colleague. I dedicated my last book to her because of the profound impact that her knowledge of feminist theory had on the arguments that I ultimately presented. Her knowledge of literary and cultural theory, her inspiring conversation, and above all her patience with me as we try to balance two academic careers are, in no uncertain terms, the central reasons why this book is finished.
But there are other reasons as well. Kimberly Jannarone has been in constant conversation with me about this project, if only because so much of it was presented at conferences where she and I were on the same panels. She is one of the smartest scholars writing today about the histories of avant-gardes, and I am grateful for her intellectual generosity and for her friendship. So too am I grateful for the friendship and insights that John Rouse has shared with me over the years. The turning point in my thinking about the avant-gardes, the turning point that led to this book, is the direct product of my collaborations with him. I hope this work does those collaborations justice.
Large portions of this book were written and other portions revised during the 2010–2011 academic year, while I was in Berlin as a DAAD Guest Professor at the Freie Universität, Berlin. I want to thank Dr. Teresa Kennedy, my former chair at the University of Mary Washington, for helping me to obtain the leave time so that I could spend the year in Berlin working on this project. That year would not have been possible without the financial support provided by the German Academic Exchange Service, and I want to thank them for facilitating the exchange. I also want to thank Erika Fischer-Lichte for her efforts to bring me to Berlin in the first place. Large parts of my last book were written while I was on a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship, and once again Erika has been absolutely instrumental in helping me to finish a book project. I am extremely grateful to her for the support that she has extended to me, not only in helping me get to Berlin, but also through our interactions while I was there.
Coincidentally, Jean Graham-Jones was also in Berlin during part of my year there, and thus I was able to have important conversations with her at decisive moments in the final stages of the writing. While these were extensions of conversations that she and I have been having about the avant-gardes for many, many years, these Berlin conversations came at decisive moments in the book project. Her insights are greatly appreciated.
Finally, I want express, once again, my gratitude to LeAnn Fields. Her support of this project has been unwavering from the first time that I mentioned it to her, and her support of my scholarship throughout my career has been decisive to any success I might now enjoy. Her keen understanding of publishing and scholarship have been absolutely invaluable to this project, to virtually all of my other projects, and to our profession in general. It is a rare privilege to work with an editor like LeAnn. I value her frankness, I admire her savvy, and I trust her counsel.
Some acknowledgments regarding the particular content of this book are in order:
Chapter 2 is a longer and substantially revised version of the article “From Anti-culture to Counter-Culture: the Emergence of American Avantgarde Performance Events,” which originally appeared in Ereignis: Konzeptionen einies Begriffs in Geschichte, Kunst und Literatur, ed. Thomas Rathmann (Köln, Weimar und Wein: Böhlau Verlag, 2003), 243–71. Chapter 4 is a longer and revised version of the article “Exile from Alienation: Brechtian Aesthetics, the Death of the Director, and Peter Brook’s Mahabharata,” which appeared in Modern Drama 44.4 (2001): 416–36. The actual publication date was fall 2002. Chapter 5 originally appeared in Not the Other Avant-Garde: The Transnational Foundations of Avant-Garde Performance, ed. James Harding and John Rouse (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006), 18–40. A very small section from Chapter 6 also appears as part of “Introduction: Intersections,” Avant-Garde Performance and Material Exchange: Vectors of the Radical, ed. Mike Sell (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011).