Acknowledgments

This volume sprang out of my book project, Roxolana: From Slave to Legend, on which I have been working for several years. I therefore would like to express my gratitude to many people and organizations that helped me with shaping both my own book and this collection.

The research for this volume was partly supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, whose 2004 Summer Stipend enabled me to travel to and do research in several places in Ukraine, including Kyiv, Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, and the small town of Rohatyn, Roxolana’s birthplace. My warm thanks go to the citizens of Rohatyn for their warm hospitality and support, and especially to Mykhailo Vorobets, deputy chair of the Rohatyn City Council and an enthusiastic Roxolana historian, for sharing with me his vast knowledge on the subject. I also thank Pavlo Zahrebelny, author of a 1979 novel on Roxolana, for conducting a telephone interview with me in Kyiv; and Volodymyr Hrabovetsky, Professor Emeritus residing in Ivano-Frankivsk and author of a study on Roxolana, for an interesting discussion on the subject. Oleksander Halenko, of the Institute of History of Ukraine at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, has my thanks for providing his expertise on the history of Ottoman slave trade in early modern Ukraine and for arranging a meeting for me with several researchers at the Institute of History of Ukraine at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Kyiv. Halenko also gave me his excellent reader comments on my earlier essays that are partly incorporated into this volume.

I am indebted to the American Council of Learned Societies for the 2004 Library of Congress Fellowship in International Studies. I thank the staff members of the Kluge Center at the LOC—Mary Lou Reker, Robert Saladini, Joanne Kitchin, Regina Thielke, and Jacquia Warren—and the fellows of the Kluge Center at the time—Derick deKerkchove, Patricia Sieber, Gian Mario Cao, and Marcia Ristaino—for their support and various scholarly assistance with the Roxolana project.

I am very grateful to the administration of DeSales University, particularly the Provost Karen Walton and the Humanities Department Chair Stephen Myers, for their generous funding and continued encouragement of my research. I also thank my DSU colleagues Annette Benert, Brennan Pursell, Elisabeth Rosa, and Richard Noll, who at various points assisted me with research advice and translations, and commented on the conference papers and essays that went into this volume. The Humanities Department secretary Gloria Lewis has my thanks for her unending patience and help with numerous technical and clerical challenges that stood in the way of this volume. I am also grateful to my current and former DSU staff members, Toni Faccani, Kim Sando, and Dean Shaffer, for their assistance with the formatting and technical issues related to the collection typescript.

I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Phyllis Vogel, of the Interlibrary Loan Services at DeSales Trexler Library, for her hard work and her magical ability to unearth the most inaccessible research materials and archaic texts throughout the years.

Special thanks go to Nabil Matar, of The University of Minnesota, for his valuable advice and support of my Roxolana project.

I thank all the contributors to this volume for their effort, diligence, and perseverance. Several of the contributors have my gratitude for their additional effort with bringing this volume to completion: Maryna Romanets, ofthe University of Northern British Columbia, for her reader comments on my chapter and the enormous assistance with Slavic transliterations; and Ozlem Ogüt Yazicioglu, of BogaziQi University, Istanbul, for her advice on Turkish transliterations and for procuring the Turkish images for the collection.

I also thank Erika Gaffney, my editor at Ashgate, for her guidance and patience.

Finally, my heartfelt thanks go to my sister Luidmila Yermolenko, for her assistance with the Ukrainian research and her unconditional love.

Galina Yermolenko Hellertown, PA August 2009