Topic Course The concept of cosmopolitanism has recently gone through a process of democratization. Dismissing the singular ?cosmopolitanism? as a form of Eurocentric universalism, critics today study a plurality of cosmopolitanisms, focusing on transnational experiences, both elite and subaltern, Western and non-Western. How can we study comparative literature within this new framework? If the Western canon is no longer setting the standards, what are the new aesthetic values? How can we avoid the pitfalls of both cultural relativism and Orientalism, i.e.