12/06/2026
Reimagining Cosmopolitanism A Book Launch For The Oxford Handbook Of Cosmopolitanism
RSVP: https://www.eventbrite.fr/e/reimagining-cosmopolitanism-tickets-1991689517963
Organized by:
Dipesh Charkrabarty is the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor of History, South Asian Languages and Civilizations, and the College at the University of Chicago. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences among other distinguished organizations and the winner of numerous awards and prizes, he has been one of the leading voices in postcolonial studies and the study of the Anthropocene in English and Bengali. His most recent monograph is One Planet, Many Worlds (2023).
Lisa Wedeen is the Mary R. Morton Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and the College and Director of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory at the University of Chicago. A central focus of her award-winning research in political theory is the intersection of art and politics in the Middle East. Her most recent monograph is Authoritarian Apprehensions: Ideology, Judgment, and Mourning in Syria (2019).
With a performance by:
Noma Omran is a Syrian opera sing, vocalist, and composer. A specialist in Oriental ancestral Aramaic and Syriac chant, she is the first female singer in the world to revive the Zen-ritual at the Daitokuji Temple, Kyoto, with Stomu Yamashta. Musically, she rediscovered and performed the first Ugarit note (1400 BC) (a fertility psalm, journey, salvation).
Omran has performed at the Théâtre de la Ville de Paris among other prestigious venues, including the role of Violetta at the National Theater Brno. As the composer of “Gilgamesh,” she also performed the role of Ishtar at the Théâtre du Soleil under the direction of Ariane Mnoushkine. She is also the musical composer of the film “Silvered Water” by Ossama Mohammed (Cannes Film Festival 2014).
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Today we inhabit a world in which extractive capitalism has expanded to reach almost every corner of the earth and every aspect of our lives; in which the planetary environment is at risk, as evidenced by the loss of biodiversity, the effects of climate change, and the devastating global impact of the current pandemic; in which revolutions in information technology, social media, and artificial intelligence have opened up new frontiers of innovation and communication, but also new possibilities for surveillance and epistemic murk; in which borders are fastidiously maintained and continuously traversed, not least of all by a global surge in refugees who are unwelcome at home and vilified abroad; in which authoritarian regimes are on the ascendency, fueled by new forms of racism and nationalism, including anti-immigrant and anti-refugee politics. New forces are at play: they bring people together while also putting them at risk and in conflict in unforeseen ways.
What does it mean to be a “citizen” of such a world? The aim of the Reimagining Cosmopolitanism project (2021–25) was to initiate a robust dialogue that reimagined cosmopolitanism for our times and developed a new and critical set of conceptual tools and categories. With contributions from scholars across disciplines and geographies, The Oxford Handbook of Cosmopolitanism creatively and critically theorizes new forms, sites, and manifestations of cosmopolitanism.
