Cosmopolitanism and Place

Reviews / Votes

"Johansen shows that the conventional wisdom equating cosmopolitanism with metropolitan life occludes other less urban locales where worldliness thrives. This intervention is smart, timely, and most exciting when it focuses on the weird species called the regional city and that ostensibly less cosmopolitan realm, the country. By reimagining the geography of cosmopolitanism, Johansen gives the concept a much needed reboot." - John Marx, Professor of English, University of California, Davis, USA

"Cosmopolitanism and Place: Spatial Forms in Contemporary Anglophone Literature offers a cogent defense of the value of cosmopolitanism in the contemporary moment. This is the book to read if you want to understand how global feeling is being recast by Anglophone writers today as an extension rather than a refutation of local habits of everyday life. Johansen takes us into the streets of the metropole, the networks of the regional city, and the byways of rural spaces to show us the multiple territories and tactics of cosmopolitan experience. This is an important and compelling addition both to the long critical history of literary cosmopolitanism and to our increasing understanding of the geopolitics of place in a globalizing world." - Jessica Berman, Professor of English, The University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC), US