CRITICAL GLOBAL LITERACIES

As nativism in the United States has renewed interest in cross-cultural competencies, cosmopolitan approaches in the classroom represent an important next step in global literacies. A cosmopolitan curriculum asks students to not only reflect on their personal opinion but to also practice cultural relativism and understand texts from diverging religious and philosophical perspectives. A cosmopolitan approach to reading imagines identity as no longer defined by the nation-state. Rather, the text is used as an entry point to ethical, philosophical, and religious discussions. This approach to teaching coincided with the increased global mobility of the 1970s and '80s and the emergence of extraterritorial actors such as intergovernmental organizations and multinational corporations.