MIDI: "Finally, the creature hath been slain!"

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Almost everyone I encountered and spent time with during the writing of this dissertation helped to push its progress along in some way, but for their direct contributions to this project, I would like to thank the following people and hope I haven’t left anyone out.  My parents, Ken and Amy, and my brother, Haniel, for their tireless encouragement.  My friends: Jim Walsh, for wonderful music to work by; Hokyung Kim, for early feedback on my thesis; Jingyung Kim, for turning me on to Freud; Raphael Wong, for tough questions about the psychoanalytic perspective; Jeff Mar, for patiently rescuing my computer too many times; Sungha Suh, for sharing her own dissertation materials with me; Gita Das-Bender, Marc Ouellette, Karl Ufert, Krista Twu, and my aunt Katherine for their useful advice and readings; Melissa Barshay for help with this work-in-progress; and Steve Brennan and Joshua Lukin for their scholarly references.  Special gratitude is also due the English faculty at New York University; fellow members of the Chinese Staff and Workers Association; and my numerous colleagues at the City University of New York; for all their help and perspective.  Finally, I would like to thank "Shinjite," who continues to inspire me.

FRONTISPIECE

“I do not wish, dear Lee, that you should ever come to realize from experience the exquisite and piquant truth in the situation of Odysseus, when he appears, naked and covered with mud, before Nausicaa and her playmates! Would you like to know what it means? Let us for a moment consider the incident closely. If you are ever parted from your home, and from all that is dear to you, and wander about in a strange country; if you have seen much and experienced much; if you have cares and sorrows, and are, perhaps, utterly wretched and forlorn, you will some night inevitably dream that you are approaching your home; you will see it shining and glittering in the loveliest colours; lovely and gracious figures will come to meet you; and then you will suddenly discover that you are ragged, naked, and covered with dust. An indescribable feeling of shame and fear overcomes you; you try to cover yourself, to hide, and you wake up bathed in sweat.”

– from Keller, G.  Der Grune Heinrich, as quoted by Sigmund Freud

Email me if you would like information on my dissertation.

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