Ashraf H. A. Rushdy is the Benjamin Waite Professor at Wesleyan University. His previous publications include The Empty Garden: The Subject of Late Milton, Neo-Slave Narratives: Studies in the Social Logic of a Literary Form, Remembering Generations: Race and Family in Contemporary African American Fiction, American Lynching, The End of American Lynching, A Guilted Age: Apologies for the Past, After Injury: A Historical Anatomy of Forgiveness, Resentment, and Apology, and Philosophies of Forgiveness.