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To think in terms of “alternative modernities” is to admit that modernity is inescapable and to desist from speculations about modernity’s end. Modernity today is global and multiple and no longer has a Western “governing center” to accompany it. The essays in this collection, therefore, approach the dilemmas of modernity from transnational and transcultural perspectives.

The idea of “alternative modernities” holds that modernity always unfolds within specific cultures or civilizations and that different starting points of the transition to modernity lead to different outcomes. Without abandoning the Western discourse on the subject, the contributors to this volume write from the standpoint that modernity is in truth a richly mulitiplicitous concept. Believing that the language and lessons of Western modernity must be submitted to comparative study of its global receptions, they focus on such sites as China, Russia, India, Trinidad, and Mexico. Other essays treat more theoretical aspects of modernity, such as its self-understanding and the potential reconcilability of cosmopolitanism and diversity.

Contributors. Homi Bhabha, William Cunningham Bissell, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar, Michael Hanchard, Beatriz Jaguaribe, Leo Ou-fan Lee, Claudio Lomnitz, Thomas McCarthy, Tejaswini Niranjana, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Shahzia Sikander, Charles Taylor, Andrew Wachtel

This special issue of positions deals at once with the concrete and abstract meaning of the word fabrication itself. In the concrete, fabrication refers to actual garments created and worn in a society. In the abstract, it alludes to the social characterizations of class, ethnicity, nationality, and gender attributed to fashion. This special issue explores the self-conscious efforts in cultural China and Japan to exert social position, using body and cloth as the crucial points in the construction of identity, modernity, and imagination.

By focusing on clothing and body practices in East Asia, this collection delves into the dynamic interplay between global trade, images, products, and standards as mediated through and on individual bodies. It investigates what fashion means in the Asian context, past and present, and enters into the debate on fashion as a modern phenomenon predicated upon capitalism and consumerism. One contributor critically assesses ideas about the proper proportions and display of breasts—including implants and other nonsurgical practices for enhancement—in Japan and how such norms may be affected and altered by the spread of a global Euro-American beauty ideology. Another essay debates the influence of globalization and cultural localization on the emergence and popularity of exposed short stockings in China. Fabrications also features a translation of Eileen Chang’s classic article "Chronicle of Changing Clothes," which has defined thinking on Chinese fashion since the 1920s.

Contributors. Peter Carroll, Tina Mai Chen, Matthew Chew, Antonia Finnane, Henrietta Harrison, Andrew Jones, Laura Miller, Henrietta Harrison, Paola Zamperini

Since 1978, marine biologists, oceanographers, and specialists in foreign policy, ocean development, international law, and strategic studies have found the Ocean Yearbook series to be an invaluable asset for research on one of the world's vital resources.

Volume 11 addresses the development of marine resources, along with recent transportation, communication, marine science, and technology developments. Twenty-four articles focus on such topics as sea-based nuclear issues, regional cooperation, transport of liquefied natural gas, along with an analysis of the UN conference on Straddling and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks.

Unlike many histories of scientific practices, which deal with laboratory experiments, this collection of essays focuses on scientific investigations conducted out of doors: biological, physical, and social. Case studies from varied disciplines explore the material, human, and cultural aspects of fieldwork, and the relationships between scientific activity and popular outdoor activities such as exploration and recreation.

Included are "Gender, Culture, and Astrophysical Fieldwork: Elizabeth Campbell and the Lick Observatory-Crocker Eclipse Expeditions," by Alex Soo-jung-Kim Pang; "Wallace in Other Lands," by Jane Camerini; "The Heroic Science of Glacier Motion," by Bruce Hevly; "Objectivity or Heroism: Invisibility of Women in Science," by Naomi Oreskes; "When Nature is the Zoo: Vision and Power in the Art and Science of Natural History," by Gregg Mitman; "Manly Men in Scientific Balloons: Meteorology and the Victorian Scientist as Romantic Hero," by Jennifer Tucker; "Paul du Chaillu and Construction of Authority," by Stuart McCook; "Of Sangfroid and Sphinx Moths: Cruelty, Public Relations, and Entomology, 1800-1840," by Anne Larsen Hollerbach; "The Ship as a Scientific Instrument in the 18th Century," by Richard Sorrenson; and "'A Tent with a View:' Colonial Officers, Anthropologists, and the Making of the Field in Northern Rhodesia, 1937-1960," by Lynette Schumaker.

The Afro-Asian Century begins the task of excavating a multitude of Afro-Asian connections and collaborations in the twentieth century. With few exceptions, area studies and cultural studies have neglected or underestimated the significance of transethnic and transnational exchanges between African and Asian peoples.

By bringing instances of Afro-Asian traffic in the realms of politics, economics, and culture to the foreground, this collection maps an alternative global circuit. The issue examines the non-Eurocentric form of cosmopolitanism that emerged from creative encounters of racialized people in Jazz Age Paris, the Harlem Renaissance, and colonial Shanghai. It reconceptualizes the Indian Ocean as a crucial site for Afro-Asian cross-pollination and investigates the cinematic culture of kung fu as a global discourse of Afro-Asian anti-imperialism.

Contributors. Brent Edwards, Andrew F. Jones, Yukiko Koshiro, Bill Mullen, Vijay Prashad, William Schaefer, Nikhil Pal Singh, Françoise Vergès, Daniel Widener

The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle offer a window onto the lives of two of the Victorian world’s most accomplished, perceptive, and unusual inhabitants. Scottish writer and historian Thomas Carlyle and his wife, Jane Welsh Carlyle, attracted to them a circle of foreign exiles, radicals, feminists, revolutionaries, and major and minor writers from across Europe and the United States. The collection is regarded as one of the finest and most comprehensive literary archives of the nineteenth century.

This is the first of two volumes documenting Maryland’s public and private debates about the Constitution. This documentary series is a research tool of remarkable power, an unrivaled reference work for historical and legal scholars, librarians, and students of the Constitution.