Global turns in US art history

Abstract

Although globalization feels recent, questions directed at nationalism from a more worldly perspective were already being posed during the Great War. In 1916, for example, US legal scholar Randolph Bourne wrote an essay entitled “Trans-National America,” in which he advocated for a cosmopolitan mixture of cultures rather than the “melting pot” that had long been promoted in the United States (Bourne, 1916). Across the Atlantic (and within the enemy country), philosopher Franz Rosenzweig was r...