In "Habitations of Modernity," Dipesh Chakrabarty explores the complexities of modernism in India and seeks principles of humaneness grounded in everyday life that may elude grand political theories. The questions that motivate Chakrabarty are shared by all postcolonial historians and anthropologists: How do we think about the legacy of the European Enlightenment in lands far from Europe in geography or history? How can we envision ways of being modern that speak to what is shared around the world, as well as to cultural diversity? How do we resist the tendency to justify the violence...

In "Edward Said: Continuing the Conversation," Edward Said's long-time friends and collaborators continue their dialogue with Said where they had left off following his death in the fall of 2003.
The essays, imagining and recalling the cadences of Said's conversation, take various forms, including elaborations on his ideas, applications of his thought to new problems, and recollections of the indescribable electricity that made conversation with him intense and memorable. This lively, personal tone is a direct result of editors Homi Bhabha and W. J. T. Mitchell urging contributors to...

As the final installment of "Public Culture'"s Millennial Quartet, "Cosmopolitanism" assesses the pasts and possible futures of cosmopolitanism--or ways of thinking, feeling, and acting beyond one's particular society. With contributions from distinguished scholars in disciplines such as literary studies, art history, South Asian studies, and anthropology, this volume recenters the history and theory of translocal political aspirations and cultural ideas from the usual Western vantage point to areas outside Europe, such as South Asia, China, and Africa.
By examining new archives,...

This final installment of the Millennial Quartet addresses the question of whether cosmopolitanism--ways of thinking, feeling, and acting beyond one's particular society--is simply the universalism of a Western particular. Assembling scholars from an array of disciplines including English literature and language, romance languages, art history, South Asian studies, and anthropology, this special issue of Public Culture recenters the theory and history of translocal political aspirations and cultural ideas from the traditional Western vantage point to areas outside Europe, such as South...

Bhabha, in his preface, writes 'Nations, like narratives, lose their origins in the myths of time and only fully encounter their horizons in the mind's eye'. From this seemingly impossibly metaphorical beginning, this volume confronts the realities of the concept of nationhood as it is lived and the profound ambivalence of language as it is written. From Gillian Beer's reading of Virginia Woolf, Rachel Bowlby's cultural history of Uncle Tom's Cabin and Francis Mulhern's study of Leaviste's 'English ethics'; to Doris Sommer's study of the 'magical realism' of Latin American fiction and Sneja...

W. E. B. Du Bois was a public intellectual, sociologist, and activist on behalf of the African American community. He profoundly shaped black political culture in the United States through his founding role in the NAACP, as well as internationally through the Pan-African movement. Du Bois's sociological and historical research on African-American communities and culture broke ground in many areas, including the history of the post-Civil War Reconstruction period. Du Bois was also a prolific author of novels, autobiographical accounts, innumerable editorials and journalistic pieces, and...

Bhabha, in his preface, writes 'Nations, like narratives, lose their origins in the myths of time and only fully encounter their horizons in the mind's eye'.
From this seemingly impossibly metaphorical beginning, this volume confronts the realities of the concept of nationhood as it is lived and the profound ambivalence of language as it is written. From Gillian Beer's reading of Virginia Woolf, Rachel Bowlby's cultural history of Uncle Tom's Cabin and Francis Mulhern's study of Leaviste's 'English ethics'; to Doris Sommer's study of the 'magical realism' of Latin American fiction...