Description
Book SynopsisIntends to assess the fate of the nation as a subject of disciplinary inquiry. This title investigates whether the nation remains central, adequate, or even possible as an analytical category for studying history. It includes twenty essays that exemplify cultural approaches to histories of nationalism and imperialism.
Trade Review“
After the Imperial Turn is an important collection of essays marking the 'coming of age' of 'new imperial history.’ One of its great strengths is its range—from the big picture to the local study, from the pedagogic to the institutional, from the British exemplar to a number of comparative perspectives, from the U.S. to the Caribbean and Hong Kong. This is an essential read for aspiring young historians.”—Catherine Hall, author of
Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination 1830-1867“This is a timely intervention in the conversation on the nation sparked by critiques of the imperial foundations of modern nations and disciplines. It both assesses the fruits of the ‘imperial turn’ in scholarship and charts new directions on how to think and teach in the aftermath of the critiques of the nation. Incorporating perspectives from a range of disciplines and locations, the essays offer challenging reflections on the historicity of the present.”—Gyan Prakash, editor of
After Colonialism: Imperial Histories and Postcolonial DisplacementsTable of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction: On the Inadequacy and the Indispensability of the Nation / Antoinette Burton 1
1. Nations, Empires, Disciplines: Thinking beyond the Boundaries
Rethinking British Studies: Is There Life after Empire? / Susan D. Pennybacker 27
Transcending the Nation: A Global Imperial History? / Stuart Ward 44
Empire and “the Nation”: Institutional Practice, Pedagogy, and Nation in the Classroom / Heather Streets 57
We've Just Started Making National Histories, and You Want Us to Stop Already? / Ann Curthoys 70
Losing Our Way after the Imperial Turn: Charting Academic Uses of the Postcolonial / Terri A. Hasseler and Paula M. Krebs 90
Rereading the Archive and Opening up the Nation-State: Colonial Knowledge in South Asia (and Beyond) / Tony Ballantyne 102
2. Fortresses and Frontiers: Beyond and Within
Unthinking French History: Colonial Studies beyond National Identity / Gary Wilder 125
Notes on a History of “Imperial Turns” in Modern Germany / Lora Wildenthal 144
After “Spain”: A Dialogue with Josep M. Fradera on Spanish Colonial Historiography / Christopher Schmidt-Nowara 157
Making the World Safe for American History / Robert Gregg 170
Asian American Global Discourses and the Problem of History / Augusto Espiritu 186
Race, Nationality, Mobility: A History of the Passport / Radhika Viyas Mongia 196
3. Reorienting the Nation: Logics of Empire, Colony, Globe
Periodizing Johnson: Anticolonial Modernity as Crux and Critique / Clement Hawes 217
The Pudding and the Palace: Labor, Print Culture, and Imperial Britain in 1851 / Lara Kriegel 230
Double Meanings: Nation and Empire in the Edwardian Era / Ian Christopher Fletcher 246
The Fashionable World: Imagined Communities of Dress / Kristin Hoganson 260
The Romance of White Nations: Imperialism, Popular Culture, and National Histories / Hsu-Ming Teo 279
Britain's Finest: The Royal Hong Kong Police / Karen Fang 293
One-Way Traffic: George Lamming and the Portable Empire / John Plotz 308
The Whiteness of
Civilization: The Transatlantic Crisis of White Supremacy and British Television Programming in the United States in the 1970s / Douglas M. Haynes 324
Selected Bibliography 343
About the Contributors 357
Index 361
