Introduction: educated subjects: literary production, colonial expansion, and the pedagogical public sphere
The alchemy of English: colonial state-building and the imperial origins of American literary study
Empire's proxy: literary study as benevolent discipline
Agents of assimilation: female authority, male domesticity, and the familial dramas of colonial tutelage
The performance of patriotism: ironic affiliations and literary disruptions in Carlos Bulosan's America
Conclusion: "An empire of letters": literary tradition, national sovereignty, and neocolonialism.