In everyday jargon, Cosmopolitanism is a warm and fuzzy word, often associated with access to and enjoyment from the cultural and material bounty that the world has to offer. In recent decades, however, the insight has crystalized in cultural discourses that the encounter between cultures that creates variegated “super-cultures” has challenging, difficult and even very painful aspects, which make it impossible to paint Cosmopolitanism in joyful colors. 

​The M.A. Cultural Studies Program, The University of Haifa, exposes students to historical, political and critical aspects of the concept. The personal encounter with globalization in the Internet Age that we all experience, underscores yet further the importance of reflecting on Cosmopolitanism. From dreamy thoughts about a supra-national society harbored in 18th century France and Germany, and the term “world citizen,” coined in ancient Greece, Cosmopolitanism has assumed multiple dimensions: In the lives of empires that reigned supreme over most of the inhabitable world, in the lives of colonial subjects that suffered under the yoke of foreign regimes and finally gained political independence through a struggle that was often violent; in the transfer of knowledge--scientific and technological, as well as artistic and culinary--between cultures; and in the global outreach of international corporations.

The current exhibition presents the responses of students who accepted the invitation to contribute a representation of the concept of Cosmopolitanism in the form of an image and an accompanying explanation. With this curatorial act, the participants expressed their personal impressions from the concept--sometimes with a critical insight, other times by sharing a personal experience--which make up a thought-provoking and fascinating picture. The end result is an attempt to capture as many facets and ramifications of Cosmopolitanism as possible by aspiring to represent it visually and verbally. If there is one conclusion from this process it is this: that even the foreign and strange is best interpreted by that which is close and familiar. 

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This is why the exhibition is also an invitation to join our conversation via its website at the following address (click here to join the project)

Written ideas, artworks, and a combination of the two will continue to be added in the hope of generating a dialogue with multiple participants, languages and cultures, about the concept, experience and most of all - the future of Cosmopolitanism.

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Dr. Orr Scharf, Cultural Studies M.A. Program, The University of Haifa.

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