Lecture by Aruni Kashyap (English and Creative Writing, University of Georgia)

Aruni Kashyap’s career as a writer, editor, translator, and academic has articulated the tension between the state and the individual, the public and the private, the fragility of democracy, and how storytelling is a politically charged engagement with society. Stories are at the heart of human rights work. By reading reports, fiction, poems, and essays about others, we are moved to take democratic action. This talk will discuss Kashyap’s journey as a writer from Assam and share how growing up under the duress of state violence has shaped the literature of his home state. By drawing on the works of internationally renowned and critically acclaimed writers such as Indira Goswami and much lesser-known writers, assassinated writers, and incarcerated writers, Kashyap will discuss how insurgency and state violence have shaped not only Assamese literature but also South Asian Literature and is re-shaping global perceptions about Indian Literature.

Aruni Kashyap is the author of His Father’s Disease: Stories and the novel The House With a Thousand Stories. Along with editing a collection of stories called How to Tell the Story of an Insurgency, he has also translated two novels from Assamese to English, published by Zubaan Books and Penguin Random House. Recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Faculty Research Grants in the Humanities and Arts Program, Arts Lab Faculty Fellowship, and the Charles Wallace India Trust Scholarship for Creative Writing to the University of Edinburgh, his poetry collection, There is No Good Time for Bad News was nominated for the 58th Georgia Author of the Year Awards 2022, a finalist for the Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize and Four Way Books Levis Award in Poetry. His short stories, poems, and essays have appeared in Catapult, Bitch Media, The Boston Review, Electric Literature, The Oxford Anthology of Writings from Northeast, The Kenyon Review, The New York Times, The Guardian UK, and others.

The Rabindranath Tagore Lecture Series in Modern Indian Literature is made possible by a gift from the late Cornell Professor Emeritus Narahari Umanath Prabhu and his wife, Sumi Prabhu. Inspired by Rabindranath Tagore’s expansive imagination, unbounded by geopolitical boundaries, the series has regularly featured prominent writers from across South Asia and its diasporas.

Cosponsored by the Departments of Comparative Literature and Literatures in English.

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

In 2008, Ecuador emerged at the forefront of the movement to recognize Nature as a subject of law, becoming the first, and to date the only, country to recognize and protect the rights of Nature at the Constitutional level. At the time of writing, several recent judgements of the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court, the highest body of constitutional interpretation, have significantly developed the content of the rights of Nature provisions recognized within the Constitutional text. However, these cases have not received extensive consideration by English-speaking academia. Pursuant to this, the primary purpose of this talk is to offer a critical evaluation of the main judgements that have developed the content of the rights of nature in Ecuador, focusing in particular on the judgements concerning the violation of the rights of Nature of forests, mangroves, rivers, and wild animals.

Andrés Martínez Moscoso is Associate Professor in Law, Director of the Institute of Legal Research of the College of Jurisprudence and Executive Secretary of ICON•S, International Society of Public Law. His main lines of research are Water Law; Environmental law; and Public Management. He is national and international consultant on issues related to water management and environmental law and participated to international research projects with the PNUD, Cornell University and European universities (such as the Antwerp University and the KULeuven) on topics of circular economy, waters, ecosystem of urban life and food supply chain. He is also a member of the World Commission on Environmental Law (CMDA) of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Co. Sponsor by by Dept. Of City & Regional Planning & Dept of Global Dev.

Free expression is a human right and cornerstone of a democratic society.

The U.S. Constitution enshrines the right to free expression, but not all those who reside within the country’s borders have equal protection. Some migrants to the U.S. are leaving situations where their rights were threatened, and they embrace the principle of free expression. Those same migrants may find their rights circumscribed when they arrive in the United States.

What can be done to counter threats to free expression for immigrants? How can we protect civil liberties and the law while also protecting human rights and building a diverse, inclusive, and safe society? When is it appropriate to deny visa applications because of a person’s political views?

Our panel of experts will explore these questions in a discussion moderated by Stephen Yale-Loehr (Cornell Law School). This event is hosted by Global Cornell and its Migrations initiative. Learn more about how Global Cornell supports global freedom of expression and Scholars Under Threat.

Panelists

Cecillia Wang, Deputy Legal Director, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Austin Kocher, Research Assistant Professor, Syracuse UniversityBeth Lyon, Associate Dean for Experiential Education, Clinical Professor of Law, and Clinical Program Director, Cornell Law School Gautam Hans, Associate Clinical Professor of Law, Cornell Law School

Description

Dr. Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky will present his book, Empire of Refugees: North Caucasian Muslims and the Late Ottoman State (Stanford University Press, 2024), which reveals the origins of refugee resettlement in the modern Middle East. The book demonstrates that, in the late nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire created a refugee regime, predating refugee protections set up by the League of Nations and the United Nations. Grounded in archival research in ten countries, this book examines the migration of about a million Muslim refugees from Russia to the Ottoman Empire and rewrites the history of Muslim migration in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Bio

Dr. Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky is Assistant Professor of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a historian of migration and displacement in the modern Middle East and the Caucasus.

A series of lectures this spring will feature four visiting academics sharing their research related to antisemitism and Islamophobia.

The series, sponsored by the Office of the Provost and the College of Arts & Sciences, kicks off Feb. 12 with “Antisemitism, the Israel-Hamas War, and Distorting the Law of Genocide: A Perfect Storm,” a talk by Menachem Rosensaft, adjunct professor of law at Cornell Law School and lecturer in law at Columbia Law School. That talk will take place at 5 p.m. in 401 Warren Hall. All of the talks are open to the public and will be livestreamed on eCornell. To view this first talk, register at this eCornell site: https://ecornell.cornell.edu/keynotes/overview/K021224/

Other talks will include:

March 18: “Out of Time: On the Rise and Resilience of Anti-Muslim Bigotry Today," a talk by Moustafa Bayoumi, journalist and author of author of “How Does It Feel To Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America,” 5 p.m., 401 Warren Hall. eCornell link coming soon.

March 28: "Racializing Religion: Islamophobia, Antisemitism and Palestine," a talk by Sahar Aziz, professor of law, Middle East Legal Studies Scholar and Chancellor’s Social justice Scholar at Rutgers University Law School, 5 p.m., Room G10, Biotech Building. eCornell link coming soon.

April 8: “Beyond Sympathy and Antisemitism: The International Community and the Creation of the State of Israel, 1947-1949," a talk by Derek Penslar, William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History, Department of History at Harvard University , 5 p.m., Room G10, Biotech Building. eCornell link coming soon.

Sponsored by: Office of the Provost; College of Arts & Sciences; Department of Near Eastern Studies; Jewish Studies Program; Religious Studies Program; Center for Racial Justice and Equitable Futures; Clarke Initiative for Law and Development in the Middle East at the Cornell Law School; Comparative Muslim Societies; Critical Ottoman + Post-Ottoman Studies; Einhorn Center for Community Engagement; Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies; Society for the Humanities

We strive to host inclusive, accessible events that enable all individuals, including individuals with disabilities, to engage fully. To request an accommodation or for inquiries about accessibility, please email Lori Sonken at ljs269@cornell.edu.