Cosmopolitan Work in the Regional City

Abstract

“Cosmopolitan with a Twist. Visit Charlotte … a cosmopolitan city with Southern charm.” I received a napkin with this slogan on it on a flight between Tallahassee, Florida, and Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2007 on my way home from a conference (coincidentally on cosmopolitanism). The slogan usefully illustrates the translation and negotiation central to cosmopolitanism outside of the metropolis—and, as the texts under examination in this chapter suggest, particularly in the regional city. Asserting Charlotte’s cosmopolitanism, the slogan simultaneously suggests that this is a cosmopolitanism that is, selfconsciously, mediated by regional and local specificities. If cosmopolitan metropolises can posit their cosmopolitanism as self-evident and inevitable, something different is clearly at work here.