East Asia Program
Xiong Hui
Visiting Scholar
Xiong Hui is a professor of comparative literature in the College of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Sichuan University, China. His research interests include translated literature and transcultural studies, compilation and research of historical materials on Modern Chinese Writers Studying Abroad. He once visited Cornell as a Fulbright Research Scholar.
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International Fair
August 26, 2026
11:00 am
Uris Hall, Terrace
International Fair showcases Cornell's global opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students. Explore the fair and find out about international majors and minors, language study, study abroad, funding opportunities, global internships, Cornell Global Hubs, and more.
The International Fair is sponsored by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies and Office of Global Learning (both part of Global Cornell) in partnership with the Language Resource Center.
Register on CampusGroups to receive a reminder. Registration is not required.
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Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies
East Asia Program
Southeast Asia Program
Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Institute for African Development
Institute for European Studies
South Asia Program
Migrations Program
Southwest Asia and North Africa Program
Hu Shih Distinguished Lecture: Emperor Qianlong’s Peepshow Boxes: A Case of Eighteenth-Century Global Interaction in Art and Visual Culture
April 23, 2026
4:30 pm
Johnson Museum of Art, Robinson Lecture Hall
The East Asia Program is honored to have Wu Hung, the Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor of Art History and Director of the Center for the Art of East Asia at the University of Chicago, to give the 2025-2026 Hu Shih Distinguished Lecture: “Emperor Qianlong’s Peepshow Boxes: A Case of 18th-century Global Interaction in Art and Visual Culture.”
This is a hybrid event. To attend online, please register here with your cornell.edu email address: https://cornell.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_OKbtn2tEQ92ZW_FrQ_FaNw
Abstract: By focusing on a group of newly discovered visual materials—most notably a pair of peepshow boxes produced in Europe and China, respectively—this talk examines a series of transformations unfolding in eighteenth-century art and visual culture across geographic and cultural boundaries.
Bio: Wu Hung has published widely on both traditional and contemporary Chinese art. His interest in both traditional and modern/contemporary Chinese art has led him to experiment with different ways to integrate these conventionally separate phases into new kinds of art historical narratives, as exemplified by his Monumentality in Early Chinese Art and Architecture (1995), The Double Screen: Medium and Representation of Chinese Pictorial Art (1996), Remaking Beijing: Tiananmen Square: the Creation of a Political Space (2005), A Story of Ruins: Presence and Absence in Chinese Art and Visual Culture (2012), and Zooming In: Histories of Photography in China (2016). Several of his ongoing projects follow this direction to explore the interrelationship between art medium, pictorial image, and architectural space, the dialectical relationship between absence and presence in Chinese art and visual culture, and the relationship between art discourse and practice.
Wu Hung is Director of the Center for the Art of East Asia at the University of Chicago. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, and sits on the boards and advisory committees of many research institutes and museums in the United States and China.
Hu Shih Distinguished Lecture
In 2014 on the 100th anniversary of Hu Shih's graduation from Cornell, EAP initiated an annual distinguished lecture in honor of the philosopher and statesman. Leading scholars of Chinese and East Asian studies are invited to speak on critical issues in their field of research. These lectures are archived as a resource for the Cornell community and beyond. Learn more about one of Cornell's most distinguished alumni, Hu Shih.
Hu Shih Distinguished Lecture videos and programs are permanently archived in the Cornell eCommons.About East Asia Program
As Cornell’s hub for research, teaching, and engagement with East Asia, the East Asia Program (EAP) serves as a forum for the interdisciplinary study of historical and contemporary East Asia. The program draws its membership of over 45 core faculty and numerous affiliated faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students from eight of Cornell’s 12 schools and colleges.
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
East Asia Program
Asian Game Night
April 17, 2026
5:00 pm
Kahin Center
Come learn and practice Mahjong, a game popularized by films such as Crazy Rich Asians and played widely in countries such as Japan (riichi), China (Shanghai), Taiwan, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Learn to play Kla Klouk, Tiến lên, and more!
Asian Game Night is co-sponsored by the East Asia Program, Southeast Asia Program, and the Asian and Asian American Center as part of the APIDA Heritage Month Celebration.
Snacks will be provided.
Please register here.
APIDA Heritage Month
In honor of Asian Pacific Islander Desi American (APIDA) Heritage Month, the Asian & Asian American Center collaborates with academic departments, Cornell Health, student organizations, Cornell Dining and other campus partners to host a series of events in April.
Celebrated nationally in May, APIDA Heritage Month honors Asian, Pacific Islander, and Desi Americans who have enriched U.S. history and are key to its future success. The month consists of programs and events that educate all members of the Cornell University community about the histories, cultural diversity, contributions, and often underreported challenges of Asian, Pacific Islander, and Desi Americans.
View the full list of APIDA Heritage Month events here.
Additional Information
Program
East Asia Program
Southeast Asia Program
Reimagining International Aid
April 16, 2026
5:00 pm
Rockefeller Hall, 201 (Schwartz Auditorium)
Bartels World Affairs Lecture
In this year’s Bartels lecture, Ambassador Samantha Power examines the causes and consequences of dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). While reductions in United States foreign assistance have inflicted harm on millions of people, the principal beneficiaries of the cuts, Power contends, are the People’s Republic of China and other governments that prefer to operate without scrutiny or accountability.
Join us as Power outlines a strategy for revitalizing a broad bipartisan coalition to support foreign assistance. To succeed in building resilient aid structures, politicians and stakeholders will need to demonstrate the effectiveness of aid programs to the public. U.S. resources should be used as leverage to secure new commitments from partner countries and mobilize additional investments from allied governments, the private sector, philanthropy, and members of the diaspora.
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Speaker
Ambassador Samantha Power served in the Biden-Harris administration as the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the world’s premier international development agency. She was the 28th U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during the Obama-Biden administration. Her first book, "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide, won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.
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About the Bartels World Affairs Lecture
The Bartels World Affairs Lecture is a signature event of the Einaudi Center for International Studies. This flagship event brings distinguished international figures to campus each academic year to speak on global topics and meet with Cornell faculty and students, particularly undergraduates. The lecture and related events are made possible by the generosity of Henry E. Bartels ’48 and Nancy Horton Bartels ’48.
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies
East Asia Program
Southeast Asia Program
Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Institute for African Development
Institute for European Studies
South Asia Program
Migrations Program
Southwest Asia and North Africa Program
Film Screening: Invisible Nation (2023)
April 7, 2026
6:00 pm
Ives Hall, 115
Please join us a for a screening of the documentary Invisible Nation (2023), hosted by the East Asia Program. The film tells the story of Taiwan's first female president, Tsai Ing-Wen.
Film synopsis: Unprecedented access to Taiwan’s first female president, Tsai Ing-wen, centers this portrait of the constantly colonized island, as it struggles to preserve its hard-won democracy, autonomy, and freedom from fear of authoritarian aggression. Thorough, incisive, and bristling with tension, Invisible Nation is a living account of Tsai’s tightrope walk as she balances the hopes and dreams of her nation between the colossal geopolitical forces of the U.S. and China. Invisible Nation captures Tsai at work in her country’s vibrant democracy, while seeking full international recognition of Taiwan’s right to exist. At a time when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has demonstrated the ever-present threat of authoritarian aggression around the world, Invisible Nation brings a punctual focus to the struggles of Taiwan.
Free and open to the public! Courtesy of Together Films.
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
East Asia Program
How WWII Changed Ideas of Racial Purity in Japan
Kristin Roebuck, EAP
A new book from Kristin Roebuck explores what happened to “mixed blood” children born to Japanese women and foreign soldiers.
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From War Waste to Cultural Legacy: The Role of Chinese Poetry in WWI Trench Art
March 17, 2026
4:30 pm
Rockefeller Hall, 374, Asian Studies Lounge
Speaker: Ding Xiang Warner, Professor of Chinese Literature, Cornell University
Abstract: The usual procedures of the scholar of Chinese poetry, when asking the question “What is the meaning of this Chinese poem?,” are familiar and generally reliable. Whether we ask the question about a poem’s “original meaning,” a meaning intended by its author, or about the meanings that accrued to the poem in its reception by readers over time, the meanings for which the poem earned a “place” in Chinese literary tradition, there are rich scholarly resources and time-tested methodological tools that help us to work out answers, even if tentatively. How, though, is the task of the literary historian complicated, how are the meanings of a Chinese poem affected, when it and its Chinese readers are “uprooted” from their native land, transported out of their cultural milieu into another? This presentation takes up these questions by way of examining engraved Chinese poems found on WWI trench art made by Chinese volunteer workers on the Western Front in Europe as opportunities for expanding study of classical Chinese poetry outside its expected contexts.
About East Asia Program
As Cornell’s hub for research, teaching, and engagement with East Asia, the East Asia Program (EAP) serves as a forum for the interdisciplinary study of historical and contemporary East Asia. The program draws its membership of over 45 core faculty and numerous affiliated faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students from eight of Cornell’s 12 schools and colleges.
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
East Asia Program
Travel Grants Send Grad Students Abroad
Eighty-three graduate students traveled internationally for fieldwork last summer with Einaudi Center support.