ABSTRACT

Awarded the 2023 "René Wellek Prize for the Best Edited Essay Collection" by the American Comparative Literature Association, Migrating Minds contributes to the prominent interdisciplinary domain of Cosmopolitan Studies with 20 innovative essays by humanities scholars from all over the world that re-examine theories and practices of cosmopolitanism from a variety of perspectives. The volume satisfies the need for a stronger involvement of Comparative and World Literatures and Cultures, Translation, and Education Theories in this crucial debate, and also proposes an experimental way to explore in depth the necessity of a cosmopolitan method as well as the riches of cosmopolitan representations.

The essays follow a logical progression from the situated philosophical and political foundations of the debate to interdisciplinary propositions for a pedagogy of cosmopolitanism through studies of modern and contemporary cosmopolitan cultural practices in literature and the arts and the concurrent analysis of prototypes of cosmopolitan identities. This trajectory allows readers to appreciate new historical, theoretical, aesthetic, and practical implications of cosmopolitanism that pertain to multiple genres and media, under different modes of production and reception.

In the deterritorialized landscape of Migrating Minds, mental and sentimental mobility, rather than the legacy of place, is the key to an efficient, humanist response to deadening globalization.

chapter |14 pages

Introduction

Where Are They All Going? Ways of the Cosmopolitan Mind

part 1|75 pages

Cosmopolitan Theories, Contemporary Debates

chapter 1|12 pages

The Paradox of the Cosmopolitan

Individuality, Globalism and the Indefinite Openness of the World

chapter 2|13 pages

A Postmodern Mappa Mundi

Cosmopolitanism, Heterotopia, and the World System

chapter 3|12 pages

Exilic and Refugee Cosmopolitanism

The Migrant as a Political Subject

chapter 5|12 pages

For an Earthly and Cosmic Justice

Some Voices Raised Against Climatic Walls

chapter 6|12 pages

Reaching Out to the World Against the Grain

The Relevance of Cosmopolitanism in Our Time

part 2|87 pages

Cosmopolitics in Literature

chapter 7|12 pages

A Mixed Lot on the Margins

Mimetic Desire and Native Impersonations

chapter 8|12 pages

Being Berber, or How to Be Condemned to Cosmopolitanism

Jean Amrouche (1906–1962)

chapter 9|13 pages

Global South Aesthetics of Anxiety

(Un)rooted Cosmopolitanism in Horacio Castellanos Moya's El sueño del retorno and Arundhati Roy's The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

chapter 10|11 pages

Hei-Ren-Hei-Hu

Be/Longing and E/Migration in the Work of a Chinese Dissident

chapter 11|12 pages

Breakthrough or Breakdown?

Transcultural Communication in Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness and Stanislaw Lem's Solaris

part 3|82 pages

The Teachings of Live Cosmopolitanism

chapter 15|13 pages

Making Worlds with Things

Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism, Performance, and Iconic Objects from the Border

chapter 17|12 pages

Cosmopolis Today

Comparative Literature and Its Diacritical Marks

chapter 18|16 pages

Transreading Across Cultures

American Students Decipher a Modern Chinese Classic

chapter 19|14 pages

Caged Childhoods?

Human Capabilities, Migrating Cosmopolitanisms, and Educational Experimentation

part 4|17 pages

A Writer's Meditation on Migrancy and Cosmopolitanism

chapter 20|15 pages

Letters from Umbria and Other Places, Summer 2019

An Interview with Christine Lorre-Johnston