Christopher McKnight Nichols

Citizenship and Transnationalism in Randolph Bourne's America

One of the most influential intellectuals of the early twentieth century, Randolph Bourne (1886–1918) was a daring thinker, a brilliant essayist, and an intrepid idealist. He reconceived citizenship for what he called a “trans-national America,” deepening and explicating his classically progressive belief that the equitable distribution of political, economic, and social resources, as well as a more complete respect for human dignity, should form the essence of a revitalized democracy in the United States. Bourne’s aim was for America, by dint of its fluid sense of identity and numerous social and ethnic groups, to become the first nation in which the multiple cultures of ethnic and personal identifications, understood as overlapping types of “citizenships,” would be interconnected within a political framework that sought peace abroad and embraced pluralism and social justice at home.