Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the National Endowment for the Humanities for conferring me the prestigious Faculty Award 2013–2014. This book was finished while collecting data for the NEH-sponsored project “Moroccan Literature and the Broadening of Postcolonial Literary Studies.” Special thanks to Dr. Mark Aldenderfer, University of California, Merced’s former Dean of the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts (SSHA) for being a terrific administrator and acknowledging my research endeavors. I would like to acknowledge the UC Merced’s Center for Research in the Humanities and Arts (CHRA) for awarding me several mini-grants to travel to Morocco and Spain to conduct my research, and my colleague and Chair of the UC, Merced’s CRHA, Ignacio López-Calvo. My sincere gratitude to UC Merced’s SSHA staff: Janet Hansen, Rhonda Pate, Becky Smith, Christine Howe, Amanda Khamo, and Rebecca Dugger; and University of California Education Abroad Program staff in California and Chile: Regional Director Dr. Karen Mead, Carmen Gloria Guiñez, and César Noriega-Ramos. Finally, my everlasting appreciation to Moroccan Ambassador in Chile, Dr. Kenza El Ghali, the Director of the Mohamed VI Center for Dialogue of Civilizations, Ahmed Ait Belaid; Instituto Cervantes in Fes Director Javier Galván and Librarian Maribel Méndez. This book was written between Paris, Barcelona, Rabat, Fes, Tangier, Casablanca, California and Buenos Aires, and finished at the Pontifical Catholic University (PUC) of Chile, Campus Oriente.