Asia Inside Out: Connected Places makes you think about borders, networks, flows, identities, and historical epochs. The volume’s essays range across Asia, across centuries, across types of polity, scales of organization, and modes of expression—and find striking resonance where few would expect to find them. Both scholars interested in revitalizing area studies and those who reject such approaches will be productively challenged by this book.

This compelling volume provides a vivid and theoretically accomplished portrait of Asian connections, fusions, and landscapes of mobility in historic and recent times. The contributions marshal strong case studies that discuss religion, language, art, commerce, human–animal relations, domesticity, and the political exigencies and outcomes of modern empires to reveal the making of places in Asian space across land and sea. Part of an impressive set of books on inter-Asian connections, it invites immediate and sustained attention from scholars and students across disciplines; it is highly readable and beautifully illustrated.

These provocative essays point the way toward reimagining world history from the inside out. Training their sights on interstitial people and places, the contributors collectively shed light on locality formation at a dozen sites across Asia. Carefully chosen maps and photographs reinforce the case-study approach by anchoring theory firmly to place, illuminating flashpoints where livelihood, meaning, and power collide. A stellar collection that deserves a wide readership.

This volume asks readers to rethink not only how they reconsider the spatial definition of Asia but also space and place as concepts…Students of Asia will discover much that is pleasantly counterintuitive, such as the boom in Korean popular culture that has many Vietnamese brides wanting to wear traditional Korean dress for their wedding photos. A wonderfully interdisciplinary resource.