Table of contents -- Introduction: On the inadequacy and the indispensability of the nation / Antoinette Burton -- Part I. Nations, empires, disciplines: thinking beyond the boundaries -- Rethinking British studies : is there life after empire? / Susan Pennybacker -- Transcending the nation: a global imperial history / Stuart Ward -- Empire and "the nation" : institutional practice, pedagogy, and nation in the classroom / Heather Streets -- We've just started making national histories, and you want us to stop already? / Ann Curthoys -- Losing our way after the imperial turn : charting academic uses of the postcolonial / Terri A. Hasseler and Paula M. Krebs -- Rereading the archive and opening up the nation-state : colonial knowledge in South Asia (and beyond) / Tony Ballantyne -- Part II. Fortresses and frontiers : beyond and within -- Unthinking French history : colonial studies beyond national identity / Gary Wilder -- Notes on a history of "imperial turns" in modern Germany / Lora Wildenthal -- After "Spain" : a dialogue with Josep M. Fradera on Spanish colonial historiography / Christopher Schmidt-Nowara -- Making the world safe for American history / Robert Gregg -- Asian American global discourses and the problem of history / Augusto Espiritu -- Race, nationality, mobility : a history of the passport / Radhika Viyas Mongia -- Part III. Periodizing Johnson : anti-colonial modernity as crux and critique / Clement Hawes -- The pudding and the palace : labor, print cultures, and imperial Britain in 1851 / Lara Kriegel -- Double meanings : nation and empire in the Edwardian era / Ira Christopher Fletcher -- The fashionable world : imagined communities of dress / Kristin Hoganson -- The romance of white nations : imperialism, popular culture, and national histories / Hsu-Ming Teo -- Britain's finest : the Royal Hong Kong Police / Karen Fang -- One-way traffic : George Lamming and the portable empire / John Plotz -- The whiteness of civilization : the transatlantic crisis of white supremacy and British television programming in the United States in the 1970s / Douglas M. Haynes.