Join the inaugural cohort of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies's undergraduate global scholars for a showcase of their capstone presentations exploring global free speech as part of Cornell's freedom of expression theme year.

Undergraduate global scholars advocate for freedom of speech on campus and around the world. They have partnered with the Einaudi Center's Global Public Voices faculty mentors to design their capstone projects on global free speech.

The Global Public Voices fellows will present discuss their research at an accompanying event at 5:30 p.m. in Mann 102.

Department of History of Art & Visual Studies Findley Lecture Series

Join us for a talk by Devika Singh, (Senior Lecturer in Curating at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London).

This Findley Lecture will take place in Goldwin Smith Hall G22.
Reception to follow.

Abstract

The lecture will take Devika Singh’s recent book International Departures: Art in India after Independence as a starting point to discuss transnational readings of art in India. Described as a major contribution to a new, transnational history of art, this captivating and richly illustrated account presents together for the first time the work of Indian
and foreign artists active in India after independence in 1947. It engages with the many creators, critics and patrons of the postwar Indian art worlds and opens up new ways of thinking about Indian art, closely examining artworks and analysing how they were received in India and abroad. Featuring a wealth of rare and previously unpublished images, this provocative book explores how artists in India participated in global modernism during a crucial period of decolonization and nation building.

Speaker Biography

Devika Singh is Senior Lecturer in Curating at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. She was previously Curator, International Art at Tate Modern where she was in charge of South Asian art and part of the Hyundai Tate Research Centre: Transnational. She curated exhibitions and collection displays at the CSMVS, Mumbai, the Dhaka Art Summit, the Dubai Design District, Kettle’s Yard (Cambridge, UK) and Tate Modern. Her writing has appeared widely in exhibition catalogues, art reviews such as frieze, Art Press and MARG and in the journals Art History, Modern Asian Studies, the Journal of Art Historiography and Third Text. Her book International Departures: Art in India after Independence (Reaktion Books) was released in early 2024 in the United States.

Join us for a discussion with Vanessa Chan about her book, “The Storm We Made” - a dazzling saga about the horrors of war; the fraught relationships between the colonized and their oppressors, and the ambiguity of right and wrong when survival is at stake.

Participants should ideally have read the book, where possible!

About the Speaker

VANESSA CHAN is the Malaysian author of internationally bestselling The Storm We Made (Marysue Rucci Books, Jan 2024), Good Morning America Book Club Pick and BBC Radio 2 Book Club pick. The novel, her first, will be translated into more than twenty languages worldwide. Her other work has been published in Vogue, Esquire, and more. Vanessa grew up in Malaysia and is now based mostly in Brooklyn.

Talk by Kathryn Babayan (History, University of Michigan)

This talk spotlights a rant ascribed to a woman from the Bakhtiari tribal group of Lurs living in the vicinity of Isfahan in southwestern Iran. The letter is undated. It finds its way to Isfahan as a collector’s item recorded in several late seventeenth-century anthologies. The vernacular language deployed in the letter ascribed to a Bakhtiari woman uses sexual insults to publicize the infidelity of her husband. I will read this rant to project the female voice otherwise excluded from epistolary collections of seventeenth century anthologies.

Kathryn Babayan (History, University of Michigan) is a social and cultural historian of the early-modern Persianate world with a particular focus on gender studies, and the history of sexuality. Babayan is the author of two award-winning books: The City as Anthology: Urbanity and Eroticism in Early Modern Isfahan (SUP, 2021) and Mystics, Monarchs and Messiahs: Cultural Landscapes of Early Modern Iran (Harvard University Press, 2003). She has also co-authored Slaves of the Shah: New Elites of Safavi Iran, with Sussan Babaie, Ina Baghdiantz-McCabe, and Massumeh Farhad (I.B. Tauris, 2004), and co-edited two books Islamicate Sexualities: Translations Across Temporal Geographies of Desire with Afsaneh Najmabadi (Harvard University Press, 2008), and An Armenian Mediterranean: Words and Worlds in Motion with Michael Pifer (Palgarve Macmillan, 2018).

Lunch provided, please RSVP

Cosponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, the Department of History, the Department of Near Eastern Studies, the South Asia Program, and the Comparative Muslim Societies Program.

Thursday, April 11, 2024, Uris Hall, G-08 Speaker: Joseph Kimani, Executive Director, Slum Dweller International (SDI - Kenya)

Join us in Ithaca to discuss the challenges to workers’ power posed by global supply chains and trade agreements, and the tools devised to address them, including new international instruments and global movements.

This conference brings together labor activists, organizers, legal experts, and scholars to discuss how workers may build their power in a contemporary climate of liberalized trade, increasing interconnectivity, and global supply chains. Hear about efforts to advance an ILO standard on decent work in global supply chains, and learn about real-world developments from labor organizers in the Global south.

See our full list of speakers here.

Conference Co-Organizers: Desirée LeClercq (Cornell University) and Hila Shamir (Tel Aviv University)

Sponsors:

American Society of International LawCornell ILR Global Labor InstituteCornell International Law JournalFrank W. Pierce Memorial FundCornell Law School Tel Aviv University Exchange InitiativeMario Einaudi Center for International Studies

Any poem, any language! The Language Resource Center celebrates National Poetry Month. Sweet Poetry is an evening event in April named for enjoying tasty treats while sharing poems in different language.

Join us on Wednesday, April 17, 2024 from 5-7 pm in the Klarman Hall Atrium. During the event, Cornell community members are invited to watch live poetry recitations in multiple languages. The event booklet, available digitally, includes transcriptions of each poem along with approximate English translations.

We look forward to an amazing lineup of poetry readings/signings this April and are excited to celebrate National Poetry Month together!

The event is co-sponsored by the Department of Asian Studies, the Department of Linguistics, and the Department of Romance Studies.