Student Cosmopolitanism and the Beginning of the “American Century

Dr. Charlotte Lerg – Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich

The paper examines the ambivalent nature of the Cosmopolitan-Club movement on American campuses around the turn from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. Through this lens, we can think about emerging geopolitical dynamics shaped by old and new imperialisms and yet informed by ideals of internationalism and world peace that sat uneasily beside militarist aspirations. While focusing on the US, the paper includes a transatlantic perspective in order to discuss the multilayered meanings and interpretations of cosmopolitanism as a concept before the First World War. Locating this analysis in academic culture, more specifically student culture, highlights the way in which the political and the academic spheres overlap in the formation and the history of diplomatic elites.