TEACHING CONTEMPORARY COSMOPOLITANISM

1. TEACHING CONTEMPORARY COSMOPOLITANISM KRISTIAN SHAW AHRC FUNDED PhD STUDENT KEELE UNIVERSITY

2. “the real division in literature now is between a literature which acknowledges interdependence and a literature which closes down and denies interdependence” - Richard Powers

3. WHAT IS COSMOPOLITANISM? • Derives from Greek (i.e. Κόσμος + πολίτης) meaning “world citizenry” • Developed by the Cynics and re-emerged in the Enlightenment • Universal community • Shared citizenship • Promotion of ethical values • Appreciation of heterogeneity and diversity • Interconnection of people and places

4. WEAKNESSES OF COSMOPOLITANISM • NORMATIVISM – Promotes an unrealistic, utopian world. • UNIVERSALISM – Ignores the ‘local’ and leads to homogeneity • CURRENT MODULES IN HIGHER EDUCATION – Discuss cosmopolitanism from an outdated/ OR postcolonial standpoint

5. WHAT IS CONTEMPORARY COSMOPOLITANISM? • Catalysts include: - globalisation - transnationalism - digital communicative technology • Forward-thinking • “a skeptical, disillusioned, self-critical outlook”- Ulrich Beck

6. C21 RELEVANCE • HOW can we understand this concept in the C21? • HOW can cosmopolitanism be applied to global communities and digital networks? • HOW does this manifest itself in literature • WHY is it relevant to C21 teaching inArts and Humanities?

7. DAVID MITCHELLGlobal Networks/ Global Futures

8. DAVID MITCHELL Global Networks/Global Futures • “links become more apparent [...] A button can be pushed in Hong Kong and a factory gets closed in Sydney” – David Mitchell

9. DAVID MITCHELLGlobal Networks/ Global Futures • Increasing transnational mobility • Ethical choices as the basis for a future utopia or dystopia • Cosmopolitan ideals emerge amidst global anxieties

10. ZADIE SMITHGlocalising London

11. ZADIE SMITHGlocalising London • “There can be no cosmopolitans without locals” – Ulf Hannerz • London as a microcosm for the global world • Promoting a future imperfect - built upon heterogeneity and discord

12. DOUGLAS COUPLANDVirtual Communities/ Digital Futures

13. DOUGLAS COUPLANDVirtual Communities/ Digital Futures • Now over 7 billion people on the planet -52% under the age of 30 (US Census Bureau 2010) • Over 2 billion people using the internet

14. PHILIP PULLMANCosmological Cosmopolitanism

15. PHILIP PULLMANCosmological Cosmopolitanism • Extension of the cosmopolitan framework • The “infinite cosmos, uncharted and without territorial borders, serves as an ideal trope for cosmopolitanism’s capacity to dismantle divisions” - Fiona McCulloch • Dissonance becomes the means by which to achieve harmony

16. WHY IS CONTEMPORARY COSMOPOLITANISM RELEVANT TO C21 ARTS & HUMANITIES? • REACTIVE – real-world applicability and involves active engagement with the C21 • INTERDISCIPLINARY – C21 themes widely discussed in sociology, anthropology, television and film

17. WORKS CITED – PRIMARY TEXTS • Coupland, Douglas. Generation A. Toronto: Random House, 2009. • ---. Player One: What is to Become of Us? Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2010. • David Mitchell. Cloud Atlas. London: Sceptre, 2004. • ---. Ghostwhitten. London: Hoddor and Stoughton, 1999. • Pullman, Philip. His Dark Materials. Scholastic: London, 2000. • Smith, Zadie. NW. London: Hamish Hamilton, 2012. • ---. White Teeth. London: Hamish Hamilton, 2000.

18. WORKS CITED – SECONDARY TEXTS • Appiah, Kwame. Anthony. Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2006. • Ball, John Clement. Imagining London: Postcolonial Fiction and the Transnational Metropolis. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2004. • Beck, Ulrich. Cosmopolitan Vision. Cambridge: Polity, 2006. • Bentley, Nick. Ed. British Fiction of the 1990s. New York: Routledge, 2005. • Boxall, Peter. Twenty-First Century Fiction. New York: Cambridge UP, 2013. • Hannerz, Ulf. “Cosmopoltians and Locals in World Culture.” Theory Culture & Society (1990) 7: 237. • Juris, Jeffrey S. “The New Digital Media and Activist Networking within Anti-Corporate Globalization Movements.” In Xavier Inda and Renato Rosaldo. Eds. The Anthropology of Globalization: A Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, 2008. • McCulloch, Fiona. Cosmopolitanism in Contemporary British Fiction. Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

19. WORKS CITED – SECONDARY TEXTS • Mitchell, David. The Thousand Styles of David Mitchell:In Conversation with Geordie Williamson. The Sydney Writers’ Festival, 2011. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOCTiCfWTUA • Pullman, Philip. “The Republic of Heaven.” Horn Book Magazine (2001): n.pag. Web, 2 May 2013. http://republicofheaven.wordpress.com • Rabinow, Paul. “Representations Are Social Facts.” In James Clifford and George E. Marcus. Eds. Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: U of California P, 1986. • Spencer, Robert. Cosmopolitan Criticism and Postcolonial Literature. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. • Schoene, Berthold. The Cosmopolitan Novel. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009. • Walkowitz, Rebecca L. Cosmopolitan Style: Modernism Beyond the Nation. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.