Mapping the background: the uncertain influence of the Ming state and imperial leadership / Thomas Nimick -- Nanjing's Longjiang Shipyard treatise and our knowledge of Ming ships / Sally Church -- How Yongle learned to stop worrying and love the gun: perspectives on early Ming military history / Tonio Andrade -- The paradoxical effect of autocracy: collective deliberation in the Ming official merit-evaluation system / Yang Wei -- Deserts and islands: politics and border control, 1547-49 / Roland Higgins -- Cartography in the Ming / Ken Hammond -- Gender & religion in the Ming / Ann Waltner -- Adopting an orphan: theater and urban culture in Ming China / Yuming He -- Theater and society in the Ming world / Hsiao Li-ling -- The Han-ness of Ming China / Leo Shin -- The hall of supreme harmony as simulacrum of Ming dynasty construction / Aurelia Campbell -- The Confucian ideal friend / Ying Zhang -- The lineage organization in Ming China: a case study of Haining / Ivy Lim -- Soaring dragon amid dynastic transition: dates and legitimacy among the post-Ming Chinese diaspora / Xing Hang -- The legend of Tang Saier / Kenneth M. Swope -- Wang Yangming in Chuzhou and Nanjing, 1513-1516: "I have only two words to say: 'be truthful!'" / Larry Israel -- Zhang Dai's musical life / Joseph Lam -- The making of an empress in life and death: Empresses Xiaoduan's and Xiaojing's burial goods in the Ding mausoleum / Yu-ping Luk -- From peasant rebel to loyalist: the career of Li Dingguo / Kenneth M. Swope -- The Ming as a Eurasian power / Edward L. Farmer -- Contested histories of Ming agency in the Java Sea, Straits of Melaka and Bay of Bengal region / Kenneth R. Hall -- Dai Viet & the Ming world / John K. Whitmore -- Korean eunuchs as imperial envoys: relations with Chosôn through the Zhengde reign / Wang Sixiang -- War and commerce in the Sino-Korean borderland of the late sixteenth century / Masato Hasegawa.