Lauren Berlant is George M. Pullman Professor of English at the University of Chicago. She is the author ofThe Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American CultureandThe Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship, both also published by Duke University Press, as well asThe Anatomy of National Fantasy: Hawthorne, Utopia, and Everyday Life. She the editor of the booksCompassion: The Culture and Politics of an EmotionandIntimacy, and (with Lisa Duggan)Our Monica, Ourselves: The Clinton Affair and National Interest.