To listen, to write, and to perform: Cosmopolitan Women's Networks of Musical Experience, 1887-1920

This is the first sustained study of music and cosmopolitanism in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century women's writing.

Focusing on the period 1887-1920, I will reveal hidden connections between European women writers who were performers, appreciators or composers of music.

Through the analysis of fiction, journalism, aesthetic writing and dedicatory prefaces, I will test the contention that representations of (and discussions about) music were a significant mechanism via which these women cultivated an ideology of global citizenship, and a formally-elastic proxy discourse through which such vexed issues as queer identity and geo-political conflict might be productively and safely explored.