The panels will delve into women’s roles in effecting change across Asia through everyday practices of food production, handling, preparation, and consumption. This interdisciplinary and transregional approach will open new windows on the ways in which women—which we see as a heterogenous category, intersecting with class, education, locality, etc.—and their domestic practices have restructured familial, social, cultural, and at times political dynamics during the transition to “modernity."

DAY 1 (Friday, April 19) Program

Saturday, April 20
9:30-12:00 Cooking as Gendered Agency

Chair: Shaoling Ma (Cornell University)Tom Hoogervorst (KITLV, Leiden)Michelle King (The University of North Carolina)Joshua Kam (Cornell University)Mohini Mehta (Uppsala University)Arunima Datta (University of North Texas)

The panels will delve into women’s roles in effecting change across Asia through everyday practices of food production, handling, preparation, and consumption. This interdisciplinary and transregional approach will open new windows on the ways in which women—which we see as a heterogenous category, intersecting with class, education, locality, etc.—and their domestic practices have restructured familial, social, cultural, and at times political dynamics during the transition to “modernity."

Friday, April 19
10:30-12:30 Nourishing Life, Family, and the Nation

Chair: Nick Admussen (Cornell University) Joshua Schlachet (University of Arizona) Christina Firpo (California Polytechnic State University)Violetta Ravagnoli (Emmanuel College) Wang Fei-Hsien (Indiana University)1:45-3:00 Keynote Address

Hyaeweol Choi (The University of Iowa)3:30-5:30 The Kitchen and Aspirational Domesticity

Chair: Jaime Sunwoo (Multidisciplinary artist)Suyoung Son (Cornell University)Rituparna Chowdhury (West Bengal State University)Chiara Formichi (Cornell University)DAY 2 (Saturday, April 20) Program

Ralf Ruckus will present central arguments from the book The Left in China. A Political Cartography (Pluto Press, 2023):

All over the world, progressive forces debate the nature of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). While some consider them to be socialist, others recognize the critical role of the current CCP government in facilitating capitalist exploitation and the suppression of social struggles.

Often, little or no attention is given to leftwing oppositional movements and groups in the PRC. Since the founding of the PRC in 1949, changing class divisions have led to waves of social protests by workers, migrants, and women, which inspired several generations of leftwing opposition against CCP rule.

The dialectic of social struggles and leftwing oppositional movements has shaped the history of the PRC, from the socialist build-up in the 1950s to the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, the democracy movements in the 1970s and 1980s, the resistance of the socialist working class against capitalist restructuring in the 1990s and 2000s, and the struggles of migrant workers and women since.

This event is co-sponsored by the East Asia Program.

The Cornell Levinson Program in China and Asia-Pacific Studies is delighted to host a conversation on U.S. national security policymaking and the future of U.S.-China relations between Former National Security Advisor Stephen J. Hadley and Professor Jessica Chen Weiss on Wednesday, April 17, from 5 PM to 6:15 PM, at 120 Physical Sciences Building, followed by a reception from 6:15 PM to 7:15 PM at the Baker Portico.

This event is co-sponsored with Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, Cornell Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, Cornell Department of Government, and Cornell East Asia Program.

This hybrid event is free to attend.

For joining in-person, please register on EventBrite here.

Register for the Webinar at: https://cornell.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_y25dTQ7LSTOCFjmTVNkjDA

Stephen J. Hadley Bio:
Stephen Hadley is a principal of Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel LLC, an international strategic consulting firm founded with Condoleezza Rice, Robert Gates, and Anja Manuel. He is an Executive Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of the Atlantic Council and is also the former Board Chair of the United States Institute of Peace (USIP).

Mr. Hadley served for four years as the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs from 2005 to 2009. From 2001 to 2005, Mr. Hadley was the Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor, serving under then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. Mr. Hadley had previously served on the National Security Council staff and in the Defense Department including as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy from 1989 to 1993.

During his professional career, Mr. Hadley has served on a number of corporate and advisory boards, including: the National Security Advisory Panel to the Director of Central Intelligence, the Department of Defense Policy Board, and the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board. He is also the editor of the book Hand-Off: The Foreign Policy George W. Bush Passed to Barack Obama.

Jessica Chen Weiss Bio:
Jessica Chen Weiss is the Michael J. Zak Professor for China and Asia-Pacific Studies in the Department of Government at Cornell University and nonresident senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute Center for China Analysis. From August 2021 to July 2022, she served as senior advisor to the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. State Department on a Council on Foreign Relations Fellowship for Tenured International Relations Scholars (IAF-TIRS). Weiss is the author of Powerful Patriots: Nationalist Protest in China’s Foreign Relations (Oxford University Press, 2014). Her research appears in International Organization, China Quarterly, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Security Studies, Journal of Contemporary China, and Review of International Political Economy. With commentary in the New York Times, Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Los Angeles Times, and the Ezra Klein show, Weiss was profiled by the New Yorker and named one of Prospect Magazine's Top Thinkers for 2024. Weiss was previously an assistant professor at Yale University and founded FACES, the Forum for American/Chinese Exchange at Stanford University. Born and raised in Seattle, Washington, she received her Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego.

Lund Critical Debate

Climate change has a disproportionate impact on the world’s most vulnerable populations, yet climate crises also impact people across the full spectrum of wealth and power. How do we understand these varied impacts and design climate policy to maximize human well-being and justice on a global level?

As climate change accelerates, we see the rise of violent conflict and humanitarian emergencies in some places but not others. In some places but not others, we see disruptions in food security and forced migration. And around the world, debates rage about access to energy, the need to profit from valuable natural resources, and pressures to reduce extraction and consumption.

This year’s Lund debate from the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies explores how citizens and policymakers worldwide can act to increase justice in our shared climate crisis. The panel will discuss key issues surrounding societies, governments, business, and labor and ways to share responsibilities globally to reduce emissions and mitigate climate change.

How can we imagine new strategies for reshaping global trade and finance, national and transnational security policies, and environmental protections that go beyond political borders? Join climate journalist Kate Aronoff and climate security expert Joshua Busby (LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas) for a conversation on our climate’s state of emergency and how governments can help.

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Livestream for National and International Viewers

Can't join in person? Register to attend virtually at eCornell.

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Panelists

Kate Aronoff is a Brooklyn-based staff writer at The New Republic, covering climate and energy politics, and a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. She is the author of Overheated: How Capitalism Broke the Planet and How We Fight Back (2021) and the coauthor of A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal (2019). Aronoff serves on Dissent magazine's editorial board and the advisory board of Jewish Currents.

Joshua Busby is professor of public affairs in the University of Texas at Austin’s Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. His research focuses on climate change, global health, transnational advocacy movements, and U.S. foreign policy. Busby was principal investigator on two multimillion-dollar climate and security grants from the U.S. Department of Defense. He served as senior advisor for climate at the U.S. Department of Defense from 2021 to 2023. His newest book is States and Nature: The Effects of Climate Change on Security (2022).

Moderator

Rachel Bezner Kerr is director of Einaudi’s Institute for African Development and professor of global development in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. She served as coordinating lead author for the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change sixth assessment report chapter on climate change impacts and adaptation of food systems.

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About the Debate

The Lund Critical Debate is a signature event of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. Established in 2008, Einaudi's Lund debate series is made possible by the generosity of Judith Lund Biggs '57.

Join Media Studies and the Southeast Asia Program for a talk by Elmo Gonzaga, Associate Professor in the Division of Cultural Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK).

About the Talk

This talk discusses how the book Monsoon Marketplace applies an archipelagic method to trace the changing vernacular cultures of capitalist modernity, mass consumption, and media spectatorship in two Southeast Asian cities Manila and Singapore by looking at print, film, and audiovisual representations of commercial and leisure spaces including night markets, amusement parks, department stores, movie theaters, and shopping malls that captivated their populations at three important historical moments of colonial occupation in the 1930s, national development in the 1960s, and neoliberal globalization in the 2000s. Juxtaposing seemingly unrelated urban environments that have become unrecognizably and irretrievably transformed such as Calle Escolta and Raffles Place, the talk will examine lost spaces like Crystal Arcade and Change Alley, which had offered contrasting experiences of consumerism and sociality in times of upheaval.

About the Speaker

Elmo Gonzaga is Associate Professor in the Division of Cultural Studies and Director of the MA in Intercultural Studies Programme at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). He obtained his PhD in Rhetoric from the University of California, Berkeley. A native of Manila, he is a former Permanent Resident of Singapore. His work on Southeast Asian film and urban cultures has appeared in Cinema Journal, Cultural Studies, South East Asia Research, Verge: Studies in Global Asias, and the Journal of Asian Studies. He is the project leader of the Doing Theory in Southeast Asia online database, which was funded by a highly competitive Hong Kong Research Grants Council General Research Fund grant.

Did the Communists win or the Nationalists lose the Chinese civil war? This talk will reexamine this classic question with new evidence from diaries and memoirs of the period that examine how economic crisis and political disillusionment in the existing regime interacted with a new type of revolutionary identity. It will discuss the immensely complex and ambiguous political atmosphere in the period leading up to 1949 and suggest that while the forces behind revolution were powerful, they contained the seeds of their own contradictions too.

Register Now, to Join Remotely: https://ecornell.cornell.edu/keynotes/overview/K041024/

Speaker Bio: Professor Rana Mitter

Rana Mitter is ST Lee Chair in US-Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is the author of several books, including Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II (2013) which won the 2014 RUSI/Duke of Westminster’s Medal for Military Literature, and was named a Book of the Year in the Financial Times and Economist. His latest book is China’s Good War: How World War II is Shaping a New Nationalism (Harvard, 2020). His writing on contemporary China has appeared recently in Foreign Affairs, the Harvard Business Review, The Spectator, The Critic, and The Guardian. He has commented regularly on China in media and forums around the world, including at the World Economic Forum at Davos. His recent documentary on contemporary Chinese politics "Meanwhile in Beijing" is available on BBC Sounds. He is co-author, with Sophia Gaston, of the report “Conceptualizing a UK-China Engagement Strategy” (British Foreign Policy Group, 2020). He won the 2020 Medlicott Medal for Service to History, awarded by the UK Historical Association. He previously taught at Oxford, and is a Fellow of the British Academy.

This lecture series is kindly sponsored by the Einaudi Center, East Asia Program, Department of History, Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, Society for Humanities, Cornell External Education, eCornell, Cornell IT, Department of Government, and Department of Asian Studies.

This talk provides a detailed analysis of the evolution of the role of the Chinese Supreme People's Court (SPC) in the Xi Jinping era, examining functions little explored in scholarship. It explains how and why the SPC supports national strategies, focusing on the development of “foreign-related rule of law, through multiple “active" functions. It explores that work in the context of strengthened Communist Party leadership of the courts and other legal institutions. The article examines the SPC's functions of “policy-making," “law-making," case hearing, and coordinating and cooperating with central Party and state institutions and how they are used to support the development of “foreign-related rule of law.” The discussion of those functions also illustrates the impact of strengthened Communist Party leadership. The Politburo's 2023 collective study session on foreign-related rule of law signals that the SPC's foreign-related judicial expertise as exercised through its multiple functions is crucially important to the Party leadership. The talk illustrates one aspect of the unique role of the SPC as China's highest court in its dynamic political-legal system and the way in which it supports evolving national strategies and the implementation of fundamental policies.