Purifying Empire

Deana Heath completed her PhD in imperial and colonial and South Asian history at the University of California, Berkeley in 2003, following which she taught at Trinity College Dublin for five years. She is currently teaching in the Department of History and Classics at the University of Alberta. Her research on British imperial and colonial and South Asian history focuses on a range of topics, including obscenity and censorship, modernity and governmentality, communalism and violence, globalization and Indian cinema. In addition to this book, she co-edited Communalism and Globalization in South Asia and its Diaspora (2010).

• Introduction: books, boundaries and Britishness; 1. Colonialism and governmentality; 2. From sovereignty to governmentality: the emergence of obscenity regulation as a bio-political project in Britain; 3. Globalizing the local: imperial hygiene and the regulation of the obscene; 4. Localizing the global in settler societies: regulating the obscene in Australia; 5. Localizing the global in exploitation colonies: regulating the obscene in India; Conclusion: retangling empire, nation, colony and globe; Bibliography.

'There were always political, racial and moral contradictions in the British Empire and this excellent study demonstrates them with particular clarity. This is an interesting book to read and shows just how heterogeneous Britain's imperial project was.' The Historical Association (history.org.uk)