The Southeast Asia Program (SEAP) gives students multiple ways to engage with Southeast Asia. Undergraduates who minor in Southeast Asian Studies are advised by SEAP faculty advisors who collaborate with them to construct a course of study based upon their area of interest. SEAP also runs the CU in Cambodia program for students interested in international travel.

Affiliate with our program to be informed of all SEAP events and activities.

Register for the information session here!

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The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies hosts info sessions for graduate and for undergraduate students to learn more about funding opportunities, international travel, research, and internships. View the full calendar of fall semester sessions.

Learn about global summer interships from the Institute for African Development and Latin American and Caribbean Studies program, part of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.

Annual internships from these programs send undergraduate students to Ghana, Zambia, or Ecuador for 6-8 weeks over the summer to engage in hands-on fieldwork. Attend this session to learn about applications for the coming year.

Register here.

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The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies hosts info sessions for graduate and for undergraduate students to learn more about funding opportunities, international travel, research, and internships. View the full calendar of fall semester sessions.

In this info session for graduate students, learn about Fulbright at Cornell.

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program provides full funding for graduate and professional students conducting research in any field or teaching in more than 150 countries. Open to U.S. citizens only.

The Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad program supports doctoral students conducting research in modern languages or area studies for six to 12 months. Open to U.S. citizens and permanent residents of the United States. Travel to Western European countries is not eligible.

Register for the information session.

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The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies hosts info sessions for graduate and for undergraduate students to learn more about funding opportunities, international travel, research, and internships. View the full calendar of fall semester sessions.

Learn more about the Laidlaw Leadership and Research Program for undergraduates, tips for connecting with faculty research mentors, and advice for writing a successful application.

Laidlaw promotes ethical leadership and international research around the world—starting with the passionate leaders and learners found on campuses like Cornell.

Open to first- and second-year students, the two-year program provides generous support to carry out internationally focused research, develop leadership skills, engage with community projects overseas, and become part of a global network of like-minded scholars from more than a dozen universities.

Register for the information session here.

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The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies hosts info sessions for graduate and for undergraduate students to learn more about funding opportunities, international travel, research, and internships. View the full calendar of fall semester sessions.

Learn more about the migration studies minor and international relations minor—offered by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. Both minors are open to all Cornell undergraduates and include courses from across the university.

With a focus on global migration experiences, the migration studies minor prepares students to understand the historical and contemporary contexts and factors that drive international migration.

The international relations minor offers students the chance to study the politics, economics, history, languages, and cultures of the world.

Register here.

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The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies hosts info sessions for graduate and for undergraduate students to learn more about funding opportunities, international travel, research, and internships. View the full calendar of fall semester sessions.

Artistic freedom is a fundamental democratic right.

Creative expression, from poetry to street art, theater, and literature, is often at the vanguard of political resistance and change, and so artists are some of the first to be silenced. In this panel, speakers discuss their own experiences as artists in authoritarian contexts where their ability to produce art was violently suppressed.

These artists have all found haven at Cornell. Their art speaks to the trauma of authoritarianism and the hope for change.

Speakers:

Sharifa “Elja” Sharifi, Afghan visiting scholar and 2022–23 Artist Protection Fund Fellow at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art

Pedro X. Molina, Nicaraguan political cartoonist and visiting critic with the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies

Khadija Monis '24, Afghan student, poet and artist

Rachel Beatty Riedl (moderator), director of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies and John S. Knight Professor of International Studies

The event is sponsored by the Johnson Museum and Global Cornell as part of the university’s theme this year on The Indispensable Condition: Freedom of Expression at Cornell. The event will be held in person and livestreamed.

Talk by Yunus Sozen

In the last decade, Turkey has not only become the largest refugee recipient country, but also one of the major immigrant destination countries in the world. All this happened during the rule of the right-wing populist Justice and Development Party which also took the lead in the breakdown of Turkey’s defective democracy and the establishment of an electoral authoritarian regime in its place. In this paper, I critically evaluate the immigration and right-wing populism literatures based on an exploration of how the right-wing populist government in Turkey conceptualizes the Turkish nation and citizenship. I argue that the conceptual frameworks utilized in these literatures lead to interpretive frameworks that misunderstand the particular conception of the nation by Turkey’s right-wing authoritarian populist rulers and their pro-immigration and citizenship policies.

Talk by Taieb Berrada

This talk will deal with the way Moroccan literature written in French creates a political space challenging the patriarchal establishment by reinterpreting foundational myths in Islam. We will discuss two political and symbolic forces at work in this type of literature: expressing one’s self in the language of the French colonial Other and narrating marginal sexual relationships in Morocco under the harsh dictatorship of Hassan II. It is the interplay of these two aspects that leads to the creation of a new narrative about sexual identities. By doing so, it reveals the instability of a model of identification subjected to a normalizing sexual apparatus controlling bodies and minds in a society where for example homosexual acts are still punishable by law. I will argue that writings by authors such as Abdellah Taïa, Nedjma and others create revised sexual identities, which become emancipated from the Western Oedipal complex while at the same time looking for alternative interpretations of Islamic traditions. Hence, those sexual identities call for a reevaluation of the normativity imposed by the king who is using his power based on a patriarchal interpretation of religious legitimacy in view of political gain.

Hundreds of thousands of ethnic minority children have been seized by the Chinese government, detained, and beaten if they speak their native language, according to numerous human rights groups.

These reported violations of children’s rights will be explored in a symposium entitled “Uyghur Children in China’s Genocide” on Fri., Oct. 27, from 1-5 p.m. in Goldwin Smith Hall, room 76. The symposium will be hybrid; register in advance for the livestream.

As organizer Magnus Fiskesjö explains, the children’s parents and grandparents are Uyghur and Kazakh ethnic minority people who are detained separately, in “re-education” camps, forced labor, or prisons. Their children are put into a children's Gulag of "boarding schools" and "orphanages," currently estimated to hold up to 1 million children. Family separations and boarding schools are soon to expand to all ethnic children, he says.

“By way of brutal punishments and even sibling separation, children are forced to permanently forget their language and culture -- thus, the plan is clearly an intentional component of genocide as per the U.N. Convention -- in ways similar to the horrific 'Indian schools’ of the US and Canada’s past,” said Fiskesjö, associate professor of anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences. “Meanwhile, the rest of society is held in terror; international media is barred, and a campaign to intimidate and silence witnesses around the world, is also ongoing.”

The symposium will explore:

what is happening to children victimized by family separation, who are forcibly cut off from family, siblings, language, and culturewhy is the Chinese government doing thiswhat is the nature of the deep traumas the children endurehow can these wounds be remedied, if the genocide is halted tomorrowExperts, activists, and witnesses, including Uyghurs, will give presentations on these issues, including the experiences of “Indian schools” in the US and Canada. The panelists include:

Rukiye Turdush, independent scholar from East TurkistanZumret Dawut, camp survivor from East Turkistan, with her familyAdrian Zenz, Victims of Communism Museum and Memorial FoundationMagnus Fiskesjö, associate professor of anthropology (A&S)Jeffrey Palmer (Kiowa), associate professor of performing and media arts (A&S)Amy Bombay (Anishinaabe from Rainy River First Nations), Department of Psychiatry, Dalhousie University, CanadaSymposium Schedule:

1:00-1:15 p.m. Opening Remarks: Uyghur Children in China’s Genocide–context and Urgency by Magnus Fiskesjö, Anthropology, Cornell

1:15-1:30 p.m. State of Our Knowledge on the Chinese Family Separation and Child Indoctrination Policies by Adrian Zenz, Victims of Communism Museum and Memorial Foundation (12-minute pre-recording)

1:30-1:45 p.m. Indoctrination of Uyghur Children as part of the Genocide by Rukiye Turdush, an independent scholar from East Turkistan

1:45-2:45 p.m. Uyghur Experiences of Chinese Schooling by Zumret Dawut and family

2:45-3:00 p.m. Q&A moderated by Ruslan Yusupov, Fellow, Society for the Humanities at Cornell

3:00 p.m. Coffee/tea break

3:30-4:00 p.m. The Experience of Indian Schools in the USA by Jeffrey Palmer, Kiowa First Nations, Performing and Media Arts, Cornell

4:00-4:30 p.m. Trauma and Resilience: The Intergenerational Effects of Government Policies of Forced Assimilation and Child Removal by Amy Bombay, Anishinaabe from Rainy River First Nations, Department of Psychiatry, Dalhousie University, Canada

4:30-5:00 p.m. Q&A moderated by Allen Carlson, Government, Cornell

The symposium is sponsored by the East Asia Program, part of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. Cosponsors include the Reppy Program in Peace and Conflict Studies; Comparative Muslim Societies Program; American Indian and Indigenous Studies (CALS); Institute of Politics and Global Affairs (Brooks School); as well as the Institute for Comparative Modernities; Society for the Humanities; the Departments of Anthropology, Asian Studies, Sociology and Government; and the Program in Feminist, Gender & Sexuality Studies, in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Talk by Smita Lahiri

Official Hindi (my term) is a widely used linguistic register that owes its existence to state-sponsored language development in newly independent India. Ideologies projecting Official Hindi as “pure” and legitimate (shuddh Hindi) resonate with many groups, including both users and non-users of the register. Others deride so-called Sarkari Hindi (i.e., “government-speak”) as leaden, rolling their eyes at its Sanskrit-derived coinages and constructions. Moreover, secular-minded cultural critics charge that Official Hindi perpetuates upper caste hegemony and Hindu majoritarianism and consistently draw attention to the registers’ origins in post-Independence language modernization efforts, which systematically targeted elements of palpably Arab and Persian for replacement by Sanskrit-based neologisms. This talk offers a different look at Official Hindi, tracing its spread beyond bureaucratic-administrative settings and its normalization within key educational and mass media domains nationwide. Subsequently, it discusses ongoing developments in Official Hindi, notably its transition from the primarily written mode into public speech, using examples from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s oratory and other sources.