Acknowledgments
I owe a debt of gratitude to so many people who helped me while I wrote this book, and I am afraid there is no way I can remember them all (despite the running tally I try to keep during the writing process).
So let me start with the people I always thank, because these are the people who have always been supportive: my colleagues in New York University’s Russian and Slavic Studies Department and the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia (Yevgenia Albats, Irina Belodedova, Rossen Djagalov, Bruce Grant, Boris Groys, Mikhail Iampolski, Ilya Kliger, Katya Korsounskaya, Yanni Kotsonis, Anne Lounsbery, Evelina Mendelevich, Anne O’Donnell, Jillian Porter, Leydi Rothman, Sasha Shpitalnik, Josh Tucker, Maya Vinokour, and Junlin Zhu), in the Office of Global Programs (Janet Alperstein, Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, Alejandra Gonzalez-Ariza, Nancy Morrison, Niyati Parekh, Libby Perkowski, Marianne Petit, and William Pruitt), and in the Offices of the President and the Provost (Gigi Dopico, Kate Hardy, Peter Holm, Linda Mills, Sabrina Sanchez, Josh Taylor, and Lisa Taylor).
Facebook, despite being evil, proved incredibly useful to me for my research on the various topics covered in Unstuck in Time. The hive mind answered my queries and commented on my posts, reminding me that I was not alone. Thanks to Yelena Abdullayeva, Alex Averbuch, Anna Dvigubski, Luke Ellenberg, Yevgeniy Fiks, Shawn Gilmore. Sergey Glebov, Kate Holland, Yuliya Ilchuk, Yelena Kalinsk, Pavel Khazanov, Paul Klanderud, Anna Krakus, Daniil Leiderman, Mark Lipovetsky, Mikhail Lipyanskiy, Angelina Lucento, Melissa Miller, Susan Mooney, Daria Kirjanov Mueller, Lucy Parts, Kevin M. F. Platt, Tamara Polyakova, Shannon Donally Quinn, Roberto Rabbia, Aaron Retish, Rebecca Stanton, Julia Trubikhina, Olga Vander, Jose Vergara, Meghan Vicks, and Emily Wang.
I am especially grateful to Amanda Lerner, whose dissertation on time travel in Russian fiction and film helped push me to write this book, and to Sofya Khagi, for her astute comments on the book before it went to press. Particular thanks go to the students and faculty who attended my talk at Wesleyan University and led me to rethink my conception of dysphoria. The first draft of the entire manuscript was serialized on eliotborenstein.net. A version of part of chapter 5 was published as “Dystopias and Catastrophe Tales after Chernobyl,” in Russian Literature since 1991, ed. Evgeny Dobrenko and Mark Lipovetsky (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 86–103 (https://www.eliotborenstein.net/s/Borenstein-Dystopias-and-Catastrophe-Tales-after-Chernobyl.pdf).
Working with Cornell University Press continues to be a delight, five books in. I keep expecting them to tell me they’ve had enough, but they remain inexplicably enthusiastic. Editor Mahinder Kingra has been a constant source of insight and suggestions. Susan Specter patiently shepherded the manuscript through all the requisite phases of production. And once again, Carolyn Pouncy’s copy edits saved me from my own sloppiness.
As always, my family put up with my immersion in my various manuscripts. Fran somehow manages not to be annoyed by my juggling multiple projects, Lev provides useful pop cultural commentary, and Louie remains blissfully unaware of what I do for a living.