The College of Arts & Sciences will celebrate the 20-year anniversary of the Cornell Levinson Program in China and Asia-Pacific Studies – and a new faculty director for the program — at an April 24 symposium on the Ithaca campus.

The event, set for 1:35-6:30 p.m. in Room 120 of the Physical Sciences Building, will feature a faculty panel focused on U.S.-China Relations; a conversation between Zachary Montague ‘13, a reporter for The New York Times, and Peter John Loewen, Harold Tanner Dean of Arts & Sciences; and a career panel with CAPS alumni. All of the events are free and open to the public.

The day’s schedule includes:

1:35 p.m.: Welcome and introductions by Loewen and Michael J. Zak ’75, member, Center for a New American Security and board of directors & partner emeritus, Charles River Ventures2 p.m.: Faculty panel featuring Patrizia McBride (moderator), Senior Associate Dean for Social Sciences and Interdisciplinary Programs and Frank H.T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters, Department of German Studies (A&S); Peter Katzenstein, the Walter S. Carpenter, Jr. Professor of International Studies, Department of Government (A&S); Diana Fu, the new Levinson Program director; Xu Xin, interim director for the Levinson Program and adjunct associate professor, Department of Government; and Jason Oaks M.A. ‘13, who leads the China team at the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research.3:15 p.m.: “Higher Ed and International Partnerships,” a conversation between Loewen and Montague, who formerly covered the education department and education policy and now covers federal courts and the balance of power in the federal government4:15 p.m.: Allen Carlson, associate professor of government and former Levinson Program director, in conversation with Levinson program alums Randy Wan ’12, Strauss Cooperstein ’22, Shauna DeLorenzo ’19, Angela Pan’ 23 and Isaac Herzog ’23

The Brittany and Adam J. Levinson Program in China and Asia-Pacific Studies offers students the opportunity to study contemporary China through a set of courses on China's language, history, politics, economy, society and foreign relations. Students also take part in experiences both on-and-off campus, including three years in Ithaca, one optional semester in Washington D.C. and one required semester in Beijing.

Take Care of My Cat (2001, Korean title: Go-yang-i-leul boo-tak-hae) is a debut feature from director Jae-eun Jeong and perhaps the best coming-of-age film Korea has ever produced. (Please don't miss the opening scene — its music and imagery are simply fantastic!)

Set in the port city of Incheon, the film follows five female friends struggling to keep their friendship after graduating from a vocational high school — an institution that already marks them as having been sorted to the margins of South Korea's relentlessly upward-aspiring society. As their lives move in different directions, the film becomes a critical portrait of class, gender, and the uneven costs of globalization in post-IMF financial crisis Korea.

Director Jae-eun Jeong renders the girls' desires, frustrations, and tenderness with warmth and precision. Take Care of My Cat also has an extraordinary sense of place: Incheon's marginality in its relation to Seoul. Its portrayal of Incheon's urban landscape shows the social and economic disparities and the long history of global encounters felt from the ground.

Released in 2001, Take Care of My Cat feels entirely vital in 2026 and continues to resonate with Korea's socioeconomic pressures and the lives of young women. Cornell Cinema is pleased to present a newly remastered version released by Kani Releasing in celebration of its 25th anniversary.

The screening will be introduced by Jeongsu Shin, LB Korean Studies Postdoctoral Associate in the East Asia Program.

Free admission! Sponsored by the East Asia Program in the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.

The screening is part of "How to Live in Disturbed Worlds," a spring series featuring two Korean films about girls navigating their own desires, tastes, and sense of self in a precarious and uncertain world.

In Korean with English subtitles. Courtesy of Kani Releasing.

Microhabitat (Korean title: So-gong-nyeo) is a 2018 Korean black comedy, directed by Jeon Go-woon. The film asks what really matters if we want to remain ourselves—or hold on to our sense of self—while living under harsh economic conditions. Many Cornellians might relate: we inhabit a world in which our cultural and social capital often does not match our economic capital. Taste is a big part of how we present who we are.

The film centers on Miso, a house cleaner who realizes that she needs only cigarettes, whisky, and her boyfriend to be happy. When both cigarette prices and rent go up at the same time, rather than giving up her small pleasures, she gives up her apartment and begins staying with her old friends one by one. The film follows along on her journey, captivated by her refusal to surrender her personal tastes, joy, and freedom for economic stability, even though that stability itself seems impossible to reach. Through her story, we feel the weight of economic constraints as well as Korean youth’s responses to them.

The screening will be introduced by Jeongsu Shin, LB Korean Studies Postdoctoral Associate in the East Asia Program.

Free admission! Sponsored by the East Asia Program in the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.

The screening is part of "How to Live in Disturbed Worlds," a spring series featuring two Korean films about girls navigating their own desires, tastes, and sense of self in a precarious and uncertain world.

In Korean with English subtitles. Courtesy of M-Line Distribution.