The Need for Cosmopolitan Literacy in a Global Age: Implications for Teaching Literature

Given the realities of this increasingly connected, complex, and conflicting age, governments and policymakers around the world are recognizing the importance of global education. The field of literacy has not been immune to the pressure to globalize. Today, the notion of literacy must account not merely for social processes but also for global processes. The global turn in literacy studies affirms the cultural and linguistic diversity of students and acknowledges the need to empower them with a plurality of literaciescritical, digital, information, and multilingual literacies, among othersto prepare them for future workplaces. Among the range of new literacies, the most fundamental is cosmopolitan literacy because it entails critical, aesthetic, and empathetic skills and dispositions needed to engage with diverse values in our globalized world. In this commentary, the author discusses the principles informing cosmopolitan literacy and how it can be developed through literature.