Acknowledgments

A network of friends, colleagues, and institutions helped me write this book. Melanie Micir and Stephanie Li read most of the manuscript and motivated me to keep writing for the next session of our writing group. Tabea Linhard, Tili Boon Cuillé, Erin McGlothlin, Nicole Svobodny, Steven Zwicker, and Pascal Ifri offered feedback on various parts of the manuscript. A seminar at the 2023 American Comparative Literature Association gathered a wonderful group of colleagues writing about the face. Another seminar, at the Modernist Studies Association, “The Face in the Street,” supplemented that conversation with a specific focus on modernism. A seminar at the Congress of Romance Studies in Leipzig, “The Face as Scene,” theorized the constellation of presence, affect, and the face. Finally, a workshop at the Center for the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis offered valuable feedback on Chapter 4 (special thanks to Laurel Taylor). Students in a graduate seminar titled “Modernist Faces” and in an undergraduate Research Lab debated faciality with me over the course of two years. Special thanks are due to Tyne Sumner, with whom I co-organized two of the events above, as well as a forthcoming special issue on the face. Rochelle Rives and Massimo Leone are, likewise, fellow travelers in thinking about faces.

I am grateful for a Faculty Research Fellowship at the Center for the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis, which helped me complete the manuscript. A subvention from the Dean’s Office and the English Department at Washington University in St. Louis covered an open access fee.

I wrote most of this book during the COVID-19 pandemic. I am grateful for the faces that sustained me during this time: Henric, Tabea, Guillermo, Tili, Lionel, Stephanie, Tony, Iva, Andy.

A version of Chapter 3 was published as “The Biography of a Face: Virginia Woolf’s Orlando,” Journal of Modern Literature 46, no. 4 (Summer 2023).