1. Introduction Babli Sinha 2. Tropical longing: the quest for India in the early twentieth-century Caribbean Lisa Outar 3. A productive distance from the nation: Uday Shankar and the defining of Indian modern dance Nilanjana Bhattacharjya 4. Transnational resistance and fictive truths: Virendranath Chattopadhyaya, Agnes Smedley and the Indian nationalist movement Purnima Bose 5. Colonial encounters between India and Indonesia Martin Ramstedt 6. Empire films and the dissemination of Americanism in colonial India Babli Sinha 7. The eternal return and overcoming ‘Cape Fear’: science, sensation, Superman and Hindu nationalism in recent Hindi cinema Anustup Basu 8. Ur-national and secular mythologies: popular culture, nationalist historiography and strategic essentialism Rini Bhattacharya Mehta 9. Visual culture and violence: inventing intimacy and citizenship in recent South Asian cinema Kavita Daiya