This book would look very different without a particular set of friends and influences. Above all, I’ve been very fortunate to work with Robert Devens and his talented colleagues at the University of Texas Press: Colleen Devine Ellis, Robert Kimzey, Sarah McGavick, Gianna LaMorte, and Dave Hamrick, the very supportive director. I’m also indebted to the colleagues in my department at the University of Texas at Austin, especially Steve Hoelscher, who has shown an unflagging interest in this project over the past five years. Every time I’ve given a talk on campus, he showed up, with collegial good cheer. Friends elsewhere have shown me similar kindness: Elizabeth Engelhardt, Chad Seales, Karl Offen, Ralph Beliveau, Karen Umminger, Stephanie Jung, Craig Campbell, David Delgado Shorter, Kyle Schlesinger, and others. I owe a special thanks to Jason Borge and Sonia Roncador for their generous hospitality and true friendship (all I can say is that the wine, walks, and talks made a real difference). I’ve also benefited from conversations with graduate students at UT Austin, especially Carrie Andersen, Paul Gansky, Andrew Gansky, Sean Cashbaugh, and Jose Centeno-Melendez. Finally, a Humanities Research Award, a program launched by Dean Randy Diehl of the College of Liberal Arts, made an enormous difference in allowing me to travel to places that proved crucial to the book.
I’m also grateful to the Public Feelings writing group at UT Austin. Its artful ringleaders, Katie Stewart and Ann Cvetkovich, have created intimate workshops where some of these pages were first tested. These experiences encouraged me to look more seriously at the role of feelings in surveillance systems, something that has received relatively little attention in the literature devoted to the subject. This is not to suggest a deficiency in that literature—if anything, the work on surveillance is impressively vast and deep. This book would scarcely exist without the scholars affiliated with the Surveillance Studies Network, many of them sociologists whose writing deserves much greater currency in the humanistic fields that I call home.
Finally, on the most personal level, I’ve benefited enormously from the love and kindness of Miranda Lewis and Monti Sigg. Thank you to my two M’s, who keep an eye on me in the best possible sense. I love you both.