Suchergebnisse

This article explores the historical questions of gender, secularism, and ethnicity in relation to cosmopolitanism as a political discourse during the Cold War. By examining the early intellectual life of the Singapore-born Alice Erh-Soon Tay, whose citizenship traversed the British Empire, the new Malay state, and then Australia, the article argues that a history of cosmopolitanism must first tackle its own presumptions about the typical "cosmopolitan" as Jewish, male, and European. Focusing on the Cold War, when the language of cosmopolitanism had effectively gone underground, the article also explores how to track the concept of cosmopolitanism without the usual language of "world citizenship."

Historians are returning to cosmopolitanism as a significant historical theme. This introductory essay briefly surveys some of the latest trends that mark this new interest, including its interdisciplinary influences and its focus on both cultural and political forms of cosmopolitanism.