Learn about Cornell's new Global Grand Challenge: The Future and how you can propose a research or curricular project.

Global Cornell is opening what will be The Future’s only call for proposals. Interdisciplinary teams of faculty and researchers from all Cornell colleges, schools, and departments are encouraged to identify a research issue of global importance and plan a path to a successful alternative future.

Teams may apply for research project support up to $150,000 per year for two years. Stand-alone curricular projects are eligible for up to $20,000 per year for two years.

Deadline for letters of intent to apply (1 page): February 26, 2024Deadline for full proposals (5–7 pages): May 6, 2024Register here to join the virtual info session. The session will include an opportunity to ask questions and network with others interested in finding collaborators.

The information session slides and Q&A will be posted online after the event.

Victor Moreno's The Hidden City (La cuidad oculta) is a dark, unsettling, almost hallucinogenic journey into an unknown world: the labyrinthine sewer system beneath the city of Madrid, Spain. Filmed underground over several years, the film offers unprecedented access to the vast network of tunnels, sewers, machinery, and infrastructure that at once sustainsÑand stands in stark contrast toÑthe life above it. With otherworldly cinematography and sound design reminiscent of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and other sci-fi classics, The Hidden City is a contemporary symphony of an underground metropolis that demands to be heard in a darkened theatre and seen on the big screen.

In the oceanside village of Iyi, the revered Mama Efe (Rita Edochie) acts as an intermediary between the people and the all-powerful water deity Mami Wata. But when a young boy is lost to a virus, Efe's devoted daughter Zinwe (Uzoamaka Aniunoh) and skeptical protŽgŽ Prisca (Evelyne Ily Juhen) warn Efe about unrest among the villagers. With the sudden arrival of a mysterious rebel deserter named Jasper (Emeka Amakeze), a conflict erupts, leading to a violent clash of ideologies and a crisis of faith for the people of Iyi.

C.J. "Fiery" Obasi's potent modern fable deploys vivid monochromatic black-and-white cinematography, rich sound design, and a hypnotic score in a folk-futurist style both earthy and otherworldly. Obasi depicts a pitched battle between opportunistic militants promising technological progress and a matriarchal spiritual order living in fragile harmony with the ocean. Mami Wata transports us to a place that seems both suspended in time and perhaps running out of time, as the threats of modern life wash up on its shores.

(Synopsis courtesy of the Sundance Film Festival)

Nigerian submission for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, 2024

Winner of the Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Award: Cinematography, 2023

Saturday screening - Japenese with English subtitles, Sunday afternoon matinee - English dub version

After losing his mother during the war, young boy named Mahito moves to his family's estate in the countryside. There, a series of mysterious events lead him to a secluded and ancient tower, home to a mischievous gray heron. When Mahito's new stepmother disappears, he follows the gray heron into the tower, and enters a fantastic world shared by the living and the dead. As he embarks on an epic journey with the heron as his guide, Mahito must uncover the secrets of this world, and the truth about himself.

The Boy and the Heron is a semi-autobiographical fantasy about life, death, and creation, in tribute to friendship, from the legendary Studio Ghibli. Hayao Miyazaki's first feature film in 10 years is a hand-drawn, original story written and directed by the Academy Award¨_-winning director. Produced by Studio Ghibli co-founder Toshio Suzuki, the film features a musical score from MiyazakiÕs long-time collaborator Joe Hisaishi.

Associate Professor Aliyah Khan from the University of Michigan will give a talk titled "Diasporic Devotions: The Indo-Caribbean Islamic Qasida and Gendered Performance" on Thursday, March 21.

The Indo-Caribbean Islamic qasida is a diasporic devotional song that propagates Indian subcontinental Islamic ritual practices and preserves the use of Urdu in the post-indentureship Caribbean through performances of religious authenticity. But it is simultaneously creolized in transliteration and translation, in part through Muslim women’s participation in public worship. This talk explores the gendered and racialized performances, songbook and vinyl record dissemination, and transliterated creolization of Urdu qasida poetic, devotional praise songs brought to Trinidad and Guyana by Indian Muslim indentured laborers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

In this lecture, Khan focuses on the evolution of women’s public devotional and competitive performances of qasidas in the Indo-Caribbean Muslim context of sectarian Sunni and Ahmadi differences, local engagement with global revivalist principles of bid’a (innovation), and the controversial emergence of women’s performance categories in new qasida competitions supported by nation-states and commercial interests. Indo-Caribbean women’s qasida performances, Khan argues, lie at the intersection of Indo-Caribbean postcolonial political identity—which is historically and continually defined by Indian women’s culturally “proper” dress, sexuality, and public behavior in visible opposition to Afro-Caribbean women—and worldwide Muslim debates and tensions over global and local iterations of Islam.

Dr. Aliyah Khan is an associate professor in the University of Michigan (U-M) Department of Afroamerican and African Studies and the Department of English Language and Literature. She is also the Director of the U-M Global Islamic Studies Center (GISC). Dr. Khan specializes in postcolonial Caribbean literature and the contemporary literature of the Muslim and Islamic worlds, with a particular focus on the intersections of race, gender, and Islam in the hemispheric Americas, including in immigrant communities in North America. She has also presented and taught widely in the field of Muslim representation in comics and graphic novel. She is on the editorial board of Bloombsbury Critical Guides in Comics Studies.

Far from Mecca: Globalizing the Muslim Caribbean (Rutgers University Press and University of the West Indies Press 2020), Dr. Khan’s first book, is the first academic monograph on the literature, history, and music of Caribbean Islam, focusing on Guyana, Trinidad, and Jamaica, and on enslaved Muslim West Africans, indentured Indian colonial sugar plantation laborers, and their Muslim Caribbean descendants. Far from Mecca garnered honorable mention in the 2020-2021 Modern Language Association Prize for a first book. Dr. Khan is currently conducting research for a literary and musical book project on Caribbean hurricanes and climate change, including religious responses, reparations debates, and other community-oriented environmental mitigation strategies.

This lecture is part of the 'Religions on the Move' lecture series sponsored by the Religious Studies Program which is supported by a grant from Cornell University’s Migrations Global Grand Challenge and the Mellon Foundation’s Just Futures Initiative. Additional support from the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program, Society for the Humanities, Comparative Muslim Societies Program, and South Asia Program.

The Einaudi Center’s Foreign Language Introduction Program (FLIP) is heading into local communities to teach children about world cultures and languages. FLIP aims to connect our diverse Cornell community to K-12 students at local schools, libraries and community centers in Upstate New York. Cornell volunteer teachers will have the opportunity to share short introductory lessons on the foreign languages and cultures they are passionate about. Volunteer teachers should have at least an intermediate knowledge of their chosen language.

Register to attend either the Feb. 1 orientation in person or the Feb. 5 orientation over Zoom.

The Institute for African Development (IAD) offers 6-8 week summer internships that let you undertake challenging practical fieldwork in Ghana, Zambia, or Liberia. If you're a sophomore or junior, join this info session to find out how you can apply. Applications for Global Internships are due February 1.

Register for the information session.

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The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies hosts info sessions for graduate and for undergraduate students. To learn more about funding opportunities, international travel, research, and internships, view the full calendar for spring semester sessions.

The LACS Graduate Student Summer Research Grants provide funding for in-country research costs for graduate pre-dissertation work in Latin America or the Caribbean. (The grant does not cover international airfare; students should also apply for an Einaudi Center Travel Grant for airfare.) LACS will offer up to three research grants to qualified graduate students who need to conduct field research over the summer of 2024. The grant may cover up to $1,500.

Register for the information session. Can’t attend? Contact lacs@cornell.edu.

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The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies hosts info sessions for graduate and for undergraduate students. To learn more about funding opportunities, international travel, research, and internships, view the full calendar for spring semester sessions.

Sarah Wolff is Professor in International Studies and Global Politics at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Prior to that, she held a Professor position in European Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary University of London where she also directed the Centre for European Research (2017-2023) and was awarded a NEXTEUK Jean Monnet Chair of Excellence (2020-2023) on the future of EU-UK relations. She was the Director of the QMUL MA in International Relations in Paris (2021-2023). Her research concentrates on EU and UK migration and asylum policies, EU-Middle East and North Africa, EU and British foreign policies, as well as EU’s policies on gender and religion abroad. She is on the Editorial Board of the journal Mediterranean Politics. Her award-winning book Michigan University Press on ‘Secular Power Europe and Islam: Identity and foreign policy’(best book award 2023 European Union Studies Association) was conducted thanks to a Fulbright-Schuman and a Leverhulme research grants. She is Visiting Professor at the College of Europe and on the steering committee of two major professional associations in European studies UACES and of ECPR SGEU.

About the Speaker

Sarah Wolff is Professor in International Studies and Global Politics at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

Host and Sponsors

This event is hosted by the Migrations initiative, part of Global Cornell and cosponsored by the Institute for European Studies.