Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program (LACS) Seminar Series.

This Seminar will be in Spanish.

Muntz Metal, an alloy of copper and zinc, remains a significant find in shipwrecks across the globe. In the 19th century, its introduction revolutionized maritime safety for the British Empire navigation by providing a cost-effective sheathing solution. Created by the Muntz family in Birmingham, the commercialization of the muntz metal links local resources such as copper with global commerce. In the process, the history of Muntz Metal Company also brings light into scientific inquiry, commercial rivalry, and the global landscape.

Through maritime archaeology and historical sources, this presentation aims to delve into the study of Muntz Metal Company. By using commercial records, material culture, and historical testimonies, we seek to understand the repercussions that the development of Muntz Metal had into navigation and commercial expansion.

Andrés Zuccolotto is a doctoral candidate in History at the College of San Luis Potosí in Mexico. With a background as a conservator and maritime archaeologist at the Underwater Archaeology Directorate of the National Institute of History and Anthropology of Mexico, he specializes in the study and conservation of maritime heritage. His research is centered on fastening elements and copper-zinc alloy seathings of maritime vessels. Andrés has contributed to international research projects in Argentina, Mexico, and Colombia, furthering our understanding of maritime history and cultural preservation.

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

The future of work is hot. Literally. Unpredictable seasons, droughts, floods, warming temperatures, rising seas, and a host of other climatic factors are changing what work is, what it means, and what it does to the body. These effects are unevenly felt across geographies, forms of difference, and inequalities.

The impacts of climate change – extreme temperatures and changing agricultural cycles - on agrarian environments demand new frameworks to analyze work in the agrarian present and future. We invite abstracts that conceptualize climate change as a problem of work. Rather than restricting a changing climate to new weather patterns, shifting topographies, and techno-fixes, this conference opens a conversation to think about climate change through other anthropogenic changes, such as sociopolitical and economic transformations.

This graduate conference will bring graduate students across disciplines to speak on a variety of topics including agrarian change, urban and rural relations, infrastructural transitions, uneven geographies of risk, and the politics of scale and temporality.

We invite graduate students to send abstracts of up to 250 words to hak78@cornell.edu by March 1st, 2024.

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.

Anti-democratic politics is a global phenomenon. Apart from the United States, countries in Europe, Latin America, Africa have seen the rise of populism, polarization, and illiberal politics. This event is an informal conversation among Einaudi Center faculty Mabel Berezin (IES), Ken Roberts (DTR and LACS), and Rachel Beatty Riedl (Einaudi Center director and DTR) and renowned Harvard sociologist Theda Skocpol, AD White Professor-at-Large, on American democracy’s place among global challenges to democracy.

This event is hosted by the Institute for European Studies in collaboration with the Einaudi Center's Democratic Threats and Resilience research priority.

Theda Skocpol is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University. The author of twelve books, twelve edited collections, and more than seven dozen articles, Skocpol is recognized as one of the most cited and widely influential scholars in the modern social sciences. Her work has contributed to the study of comparative politics, American politics, comparative and historical sociology, U.S. history, and the study of public policy. Her first book, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China (1979), won the 1979 C. Wright Mills Award and the 1980 American Sociological Association Award for a Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship. Skocpol edited Vision and Method in Historical Sociology (1984) and co-edited the influential Social Science Research Council collection Bringing the State Back In (1985). Since the 1990s, Skocpol’s research has focused on US politics in historical and comparative perspective. Her Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (1992), won five scholarly awards. Her most recent book is Upending American Politics: Polarizing Parties, Ideological Elites, and Citizen Activists from the Tea Party to the Anti-Trump Resistance (edited with Caroline Tervo, 2020). Skocpol is an elected member of all three major U.S. interdisciplinary honor societies: the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the National Academy of Sciences. In 2009, she co-founded, and currently directs, the Scholars Strategy Network (SSN), whose mission is to improve public policy and strengthen democracy by encouraging nonpartisan public engagement by university-based scholars. SSN has grown into a national organization of over 900 scholars from 200+ universities, focused on bringing evidenced-based policy research to the public discourse.