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East Asia Program

Global Approaches to Race, Ethnicity, and Inequality

July 24, 2020

12:00 pm

Across the world, injustice perpetuates racial and ethnic inequalities, including policing practices, census and identity card categorizations, access to healthcare, education, employment, mobility, and political representation. Racial and ethnic inequalities are fundamentally about differential access to power, resources, protections, and rights. These injustices share common elements, but different histories and contexts shape them.

In this session of our webinar series, four experts on race and ethnicity will analyze global inequalities as they are experienced in local and regional forms, and analyze the implications of the contemporary moment for transformative change.

Moderator:

Rachel Beatty Riedl, Director of the Einaudi Center and Professor, Government Department, Cornell University.
Riedl teaches comparative and African politics, with an emphasis on political parties, democracy, and authoritarianism.

Panelists:

Prerna Singh, Political Science, Brown University.
Singh's research focuses on the intersection of ethnic conflict and competition, and the improvement of human well-being, particularly in the promotion of social welfare in South Asia.

Pap Ndiaye, History, Sciences Po (Paris).
Ndiaye's research focuses on transnational philosophies of race that draw both from American and French political thought, especially as they apply to the African diaspora populations of both countries.

Alisha Holland, Government, Harvard University.
Holland researches the comparative political economy of development with a focus on urban politics, social policy, and Latin America.

Leo Arriola, Political Science, University of California Berkeley.
Arriola studies comparative politics with a focus on democratization and governance in Africa.

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

Lingua Mater Student Competition Deadline

November 1, 2020

5:00 pm

The Lingua Mater competition invites students to translate Cornell's Alma Mater into a different language and submit a video of the performed translation. The inaugural Lingua Mater student competition took place in 2018 as part of Cornell's Global Grand Challenges Symposium. The top three videos received cash prizes.

2020 competition details

Can you translate Cornell’s Alma Mater into your mother tongue (or a language you are learning/have learned at Cornell) and sing it in public? We invite you to translate “Far Above Cayuga’s Waters” and submit a video of you (and your friends!) performing it somewhere - virtually - on any of Cornell’s campuses.

Translations do not need to be exact or perfectly in meter but should capture the feel and tune of our university’s Alma Mater. As is customary, include the first verse, refrain, second verse, and refrain in your video submission (for guidance, listen to a performance and read the lyrics).

Video submissions need to be MP4 files at 1920 x 1080 (1080p), in landscape mode with an aspect ratio of 16:9. Please ensure that you have copyright permission for any images/videos you use.

Entries will be reviewed by a panel of judges. Submissions will be judged equally on the translation, the musical quality, and the creativity in visual presentation.

The top three entries will win cash prizes.

Winners will be announced during International Education Week (November 16-20, 2020) and the top three videos will be posted online that week.

Entries may be submitted by any registered Cornell student or group of students.

Submission deadline: Sunday, November 1, 2020 at 5 pm

SUBMIT YOUR VIDEO HERE

Please contact Angelika Kraemer, Director of the Language Resource Center, if you have any questions.

The Lingua Mater competition is co-sponsored by the Language Resource Center and the Office of the Vice Provost for International Affairs.

Additional Information

Program

Einaudi Center for International Studies

East Asia Program

Southeast Asia Program

Latin American and Caribbean Studies

South Asia Program

Lingua Mater Alumni Competition Deadline

November 1, 2020

5:00 pm

The Lingua Mater competition invites alumni to translate Cornell's Alma Mater into a different language and submit a video of the performed translation. The inaugural Lingua Mater alumni competition took place in 2018 as part of Cornell's Global Grand Challenges Symposium. Winners included the Cornell Club of Thailand 2018 and the Cornell Club of Gaeta, Italy in 2019, and won financial support of a local alumni event.

2020 competition details

Can you translate Cornell’s Alma Mater into your mother tongue (or a language you learned at Cornell) and sing it in public? We invite you to translate “Far Above Cayuga’s Waters” and submit a video of you (and your friends!) performing it, wherever you may be!

Translations do not need to be exact or perfectly in meter but should capture the feel and tune of our university’s Alma Mater. As is customary, include the first verse, refrain, second verse, and refrain in your video submission (for guidance, listen to a performance and read the lyrics).

Video submissions need to be MP4 files at 1920 x 1080 (1080p), in landscape mode with an aspect ratio of 16:9. Please ensure that you have copyright permission for any images/videos you use.

Entries will be reviewed by a panel of judges. Submissions will be judged equally on the translation, the musical quality, and the creativity in visual presentation.

The top entry will receive financial support and Cornell swag for a local alumni event.

Winners will be announced during International Education Week (November 16-20, 2020) via Noteworthy, and the top three videos will be posted online that week. Be sure to subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay in the know of this competition and international alumni activities.

Entries may be submitted by any Cornell alumni groups outside of the United States and Canada.

Submission deadline: Sunday, November 1, 2020 at 5 pm

SUBMIT YOUR VIDEO HERE

Please contact the International Alumni Relations team if you have any questions.

The Lingua Mater competition is co-sponsored by the Office of International Alumni Relations, the Language Resource Center, and the Office of the Vice Provost for International Affairs.

Additional Information

Program

Einaudi Center for International Studies

East Asia Program

Southeast Asia Program

Latin American and Caribbean Studies

South Asia Program

“Anti-Blackness” in Chinese Racial-Nationalism

A biracial family hug one another in China
July 1, 2020

Sex/Gender, Reproduction, and Metaphors of Pathology

Kun Huang, a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature and officer in our EAP Graduate Student Steering committee, writes about "Anti-Blackness" in China, in the journal, "Praxis". Her article, "Anti-Blackness" in Chinese racial-nationalism" states: In recent years, each time a mixed-race Chinese-African person went viral on social media, a nationalist uproar erupted online. A mixed-race Chinese-African child and intermarriage between Chinese and Africans have come to symbolize anxieties over “Chineseness.” This article explores how Chinese racial-nationalism, ideologies of sex and gender, and the biopolitics of disease prevention combine to form the affective and discursive justifications for contemporary Chinese anti-Black racism.
Notes on English edition: This essay was originally published in Chinese on the “Trading Thoughts” column of thepaper.cn (澎湃思想市场) on June 20, 2020. 

Additional Information

Topic

Program

East Asia Program statement of solidarity with BLM

Black Lives Matter protest in Seoul
June 30, 2020

Throughout modern history, the emergence of movements making powerful demands for justice have opened up the possibility for profound social transformations.  The East Asia Program recognizes such a moment in the sweeping protests that have arisen over the murders by police of unarmed Black persons. Together with people across the globe who are demonstrating the justice and necessity of this movement, we wish to express our affirmation of, and support for, Black Lives Matter and its allies in their quest for redress for injuries perpetuated by systemic racism. 

For too long, we have failed to acknowledge both the blatant, and also subtle, violences that have been the legacies of American slavery, the genocide of indigenous peoples, and exclusionary practices and illegal internments of Asian migrants and their descendants. We have also disavowed the intersection, modeling, and impact of these racist policies in other societies across the globe. Complicity with this disavowal at every level of our institutions, including those of higher education, belie the principles of democracy to which we believe scholars and people across the globe aspire. Indeed, as people everywhere reflect on the origins of modern national cultures, we believe we as scholars must undertake far-reaching examination of  how our very critical concepts , not only of “race,” but of “racism” itself, may yet perpetuate systemic racism and the violences that accompany it, including in the knowledge practices called area studies. We therefore urge Cornell University, in the coming year, to encourage and promote extensive reflection on these matters, as well as intersecting oppressions (e.g. gender, sexuality, and class), and how they may be addressed in our teaching and research, in hiring and promotion, and in transforming the cultural and social life of the university as a whole. 

Additional Information

Some Of China's Freed Labor Activists Start New Lives, But State Pressure Lurks

Chinese workers protest outside
June 29, 2020

"Especially given that [Chinese leader] Xi Jinping has reasserted the role of Marxism in education and official ideology, the state wants to keep a very tight grip on defining the terms of the debate," said Eli Friedman, an expert on labor in China at Cornell University.

Friedman explains the activists' union work highlighted deficiencies where the Chinese Communist Party has not upheld its own socialist commitments: "Students trying to organize with workers, while aggressively framing the struggle in Marxist political terms, poses a real threat to ideological monopoly," he says.

Additional Information

Ivanna Sang Een Yi

headshot image of Ivanna Yi

Assistant Professor, Asian Studies

Ivanna Sang Een Yi is a scholar of Korean literature, culture, and performance. Her research focuses on the performative dimensions of living oral traditions as they interact with written literature and the environment from the late Chosŏn period to the present. Her current book project, Continuing Orality and the Environment in Korean Literature, examines the flourishing of Korean oral traditions such as p’ansori (epic dramatic storytelling) and sijo (lyric poetry) through transformative encounters with writing, the environment, and recording technology.

Additional Information

Program

Role

  • Faculty
  • EAP Core Faculty

Contact

Pandemic: What International Studies Tells Us

June 25, 2020

12:00 pm

Students: Join Einaudi Center regional experts for this #SummerPassport webinar--for all undergraduate and graduate students interested in global thinking and action.

The outbreak of a novel coronavirus may be the most significant world event of our century. It's a pandemic--a Greek word that means "all people." Around the world, all of us are experiencing this shared breakdown of public health, economics, and international cooperation.

Experts representing Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America will discuss the big questions facing our major world regions during this global crisis. What are reforms, new ways of thinking, and new challenges that will emerge out of the pandemic?

Moderator:

Rachel Beatty Riedl, Director, Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies

Panelists:

Esra Akcan, 2019-2020 Frieda Miller Fellow, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University; Associate Professor, Michael A. McCarthy Professor of Architectural Theory, Department of Architecture, Cornell University; Member, Cornell Institute for Comparative Modernities.
Marcelo Borges, Professor of History; Boyd Lee Spahr Chair in the History of the Americas at Dickinson College, and Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies, Nantes.
Expedit Ologou, Founder, Civic Academy for Africa’s Future, and Director of Politics and Governance Programs at the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Benin.
Jenny Goldstein, Assistant Professor in the Department of Global Development at Cornell University, an Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future Faculty Fellow, and a core faculty member of Cornell's Southeast Asian Studies Program at Cornell University.

Co-sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Studies, Nantes.

Register now!

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

Faculty Conversation: Research in the Time of Coronavirus

June 4, 2020

12:00 pm

Across the world, our lives have been upended by the COVID-19 pandemic. All fields of study are impacted, as our medical, agricultural, economic, political, and cultural systems are challenged. The crisis reinforces the need to think differently and boldly about the world today and the world ahead.

The Einaudi Center invites all Cornell faculty to come together for a conversation about ways forward. Join us to share reflections and identify pathways for collaborative projects and new research agendas.

REGISTER NOW

Each participant will be asked to share brief reflections on three interrelated questions:
1. How has the coronavirus affected your field and/or your research?
2. What are the most urgent questions that you see arising out of this moment?
3. What are the next-generation questions you imagine or the rethinking you see potentially occurring in the next phase, as we move beyond the pandemic?

Particularly when we cannot travel to planned conferences, seminars, research sites, our intellectual community can sustain us and catalyze new individual and collaborative projects with international partners virtually.

We encourage all participants to think about what parts of these questions they would like to take forward and what infrastructure or collaborators would be useful to put together a team with synergistic capacities. Contributions may be worked up into a series of short essays for the Einaudi website, a collective review for publication, and/or grant applications and seed projects.

Moderator: Rachel Beatty Riedl, Director, Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies

Please send any questions or suggestions in advance of the conversation to rbeattyriedl@cornell.edu.

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

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