Come to the LRC to practice your language skills and meet new people. Conversation Hours provide an opportunity to use the target language in an informal, low-pressure atmosphere. Have fun practicing a language you are learning! Gain confidence through experience! Just using your new language skills helps you learn more than you might think. Conversation Hours are open to any learner, including the public.

Join us for the final evening recital of guest composer Makiko Nishikaze’s visit to Cornell. A wide array of chamber works from throughout Nishikaze’s eclectic career will be performed by members of the Cornell community, as well as by the composer herself. From four-hands arrangements of J.S. Bach to forays in 9-piece open instrumentation, come experience the multiple facets of Nishikaze’s unique artistic voice.

This event is part of a week-long residency sponsored by the Department of Music, the Department of Asian Studies, the East Asia Program, the Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards, and Ensemble X.

As part of guest composer Makiko Nishikaze’s visit to Cornell, pianist Jack Yarbrough presents a lecture-recital on her vast output of piano music. Selections from over 30 years of creative engagement with the instrument will be performed with extensive commentary. The evening will conclude with the world premiere of Nishikaze’s newly commissioned piano work, piano-ongoing. This event is part of a week-long residency sponsored by the Department of Music, the Department of Asian Studies, the East Asia Program, the Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards, and Ensemble X.

Gatty Lecture Series

Join us for a talk by Taomo Zhou, Associate Professor of Chinese Studies, National University of Singapore.

This Gatty Lecture will take place at The Kahin Center, 640 Stewart Ave. Lunch will be served. For questions, contact seapgatty@cornell.edu.

Abstract
Motherhood—one of the most important and yet mundane social institutions—is central to our understanding of the latter half of the twentieth century. This talk focuses on a left-wing Indonesian activist in the Afro-Asian movements, Francisca Casparina Fanggidaej (1925–2013), a mother of seven who endured decades of forced separation from her family. Based on a close reading of Fanggidaej’s diaries, personal letters, and oral history interviews with her family and friends, I discuss the politics of maternal absence in Indonesia and China—two leading countries in the Afro-Asian movements. I explore how these two countries shaped the public and self-perceptions of non-residential mothers through their welfare provisions and reproductive policies; and how a transnational figure like Fanggidaej navigated motherhood within frameworks of revolutionary anticolonialism in Indonesia, state socialism in China, and the global rise of capitalist neoliberalism, which ultimately displaced the Third World internationalist vision once championed by both nations. I argue that the fall of Third World internationalism signaled not only a missed opportunity to reconfigure global geopolitics, but also a lost chance to redefine motherhood—not as the individualized enterprise of the birth mother alone but as a communal effort involving an assemblage of caretakers regardless of kinship or gender.

About the Speaker
Taomo Zhou is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chinese Studies and Dean’s Chair in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore. Her first book, Migration in the Time of Revolution: China, Indonesia and the Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2019), won a Foreign Affairs “Best Books of 2020” award and an Honorable Mention for the 2021 Harry J. Benda Prize from the Association for Asian Studies. Taomo is currently working on her second book project tentatively entitled “Made in Shenzhen: A Global History of China’s First Special Economic Zone,” which is under advance contract with Stanford University Press. She is also researching on motherhood during the Cold War.

Composer, pianist, performance, and video artist Makiko Nishikaze joins Cornell’s composers' forum to present on her music. Born in Wakayama, Japan and residing in Berlin, Germany, Nishikaze’s highly varied work comfortably spans mediums and practices, with a particular emphasis on spatial performance, early and modern keyboards and intermedial composition. She writes, “I have for some time been concerned with spatial music. The performance space itself is used as an instrument to unite visual and acoustic impressions in a single whole. I often extend the concept of my composition with performative-action, using everyday objects and materials, with which I explore the spatial dimensions visibly and audibly. My compositions are not directed at some eccentric or stunning result but are rather intended as a guide towards a higher level of the ability to listen.” This event is part of a week-long residency sponsored by the Department of Music, the Department of Asian Studies, the East Asia Program, the Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards, and Ensemble X.

Come to the LRC or join us on Zoom to practice your language skills and meet new people. Conversation Hours provide an opportunity to use the target language in an informal, low-pressure atmosphere. Have fun practicing a language you are learning! Gain confidence through experience! Just using your new language skills helps you learn more than you might think. Conversation Hours are open to any learner, including the public.

Join us to learn about opportunities for graduate students with the Einaudi Center for International Studies. This session will discuss how to discover or strengthen global interests, including research and travel grants, guest lectures, fellowships, and more!

Can't attend? Email programs@einaudi.cornell.edu for more information.

Nebula and Ursula K. Le Guin Award winning author Vajra Chandrasekera discusses his writing with Anindita Banerjee, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, and Suman Seth, Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow and Marie Underhill Noll Professor of the History of Science.

Vajra Chandrasekera is from Colombo, Sri Lanka. His novels The Saint of Bright Doors and Rakesfall have between them won Nebula, Le Guin, Ignyte, Locus, Crawford, and Otherwise awards, been selected as New York Times Notable Books of 2023 and 2024, and been nominated for Dragon and Lamda Awards, among others. He is one of the 2025-2026 Fellows of the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. His short stories, poems, and articles have appeared in many publications including Clarkesworld, West Branch, and The Los Angeles Times. He has worked as a fiction editor for Strange Horizons, The Deadlands, and Afterlives: The Year’s Best Death Stories, and as a contest judge for the Dream Foundry and the Salam Award. He is online at vajra.me and probably on whatever social media still exists at the time you’re reading this.

Books will be available for sale and signing after the lecture, from Odyssey Bookstore.

The Laidlaw Scholars Leadership and Research Program 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 Laidlaw 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 twenty universities worldwide.

At this session, we'll share more information about the program, including independent international projects with the Einaudi Center’s trusted partners around the world for the summer 2026 leadership-in-action portion of the program, and tips for writing a successful application. Applications are due January 12, 2026.

Register here. Can’t attend? Contact programs@einaudi.cornell.edu.