I am fortunate to belong to a dedicated writing group whose members patiently read and commented on earlier drafts of this book. I would like to thank Carrie Tirado Breman, Ann Colley, and Rosemary Feal. Larry Shiner, whose own scholarship has taught me a great deal, generously read the book in draft and offered his thoughtful advice. Andrew Schwartz commented on Chapter 6; Beth Ann Dobie contributed helpful information about the use of food in art; and Peg Brand offered suggestions about the project as it developed. Cynthia Freeland and Rachel Jones, in the guise of anonymous readers for the press, offered attentive and detailed comments that greatly aided the process of revision. I am grateful to all of them for their help.
The Office of the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, generously supported the reproduction permissions for the illustrations. Siobhan Pattinson, editor at Routledge, was a great help obtaining permissions and seeing the book through to publication. Finally, I would like to thank Linda Alcoff for putting together the series, Understanding Feminist Philosophy, to which this book belongs.