Unfortunately, this 4C's text reading with Andrew Schonebaum is canceled. For more information, please contact: eap-guwen@cornell.edu.

The Cornell Classical Chinese Colloquium (CCCC) 古文品讀 is a reading group for scholars interested in premodern Sinographic text (古文). The group meets monthly during the semester to explore a variety of classical Chinese texts and styles. Other premodern texts linked to classical Chinese in Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese have been explored. Presentations include works from the earliest times to the 20th century. Workshop sessions are led by local, national, and international scholars.

Participants with any level of classical Chinese experience are welcome to attend.

At each session, a presenter guides the group in a reading of a classical Chinese text. Attendees discuss historical, literary, linguistic, and other aspects of the text, working together to resolve difficulties in comprehension and translation.

No preparation is required; all texts will be distributed at the meeting.Contact eap-guwen@cornell.edu for more information and subscribe to CCCC news for updates about events. Please make sure to send your subscription request from the email address at which you wish to receive CCCC updates.

Cornell faculty hosts are TJ Hinrichs, History, and Suyoung Son, Asian Studies.

Siddharth Kara is a researcher, activist, and author on modern slavery. He is a British Academy Global Professor and a Visiting Lecturer at the Jeb E. Brooks School at Public Policy. Kara has taught courses on modern slavery at the Harvard Kennedy School, UC Berkeley, and Cornell.

Cobalt Red is the searing, first-ever exposéof the immense toll taken on the people and environment of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by cobalt mining, as told through the testimonies of the Congolese people themselves. Kara has traveled deep into cobalt territory to document the testimonies of the people living, working, and dying for cobalt. To uncover the truth about brutal mining practices, Kara investigated militia-controlled mining areas, traced the supply chain of child-mined cobalt from toxic pit to consumer-facing tech giants, and gathered shocking testimonies of people who endure immense suffering and even die mining cobalt.

The resounding victory of the Polish opposition on October 15 bewildered many comparative political scientists. The loose coalition of liberals, leftists, and Christian Democrats defied international trends by out-competing the ruling Law and Justice party (“PiS”) in a barely free and grotesquely unfair ballot held eight years after PiS’s 2015 ascent to power. The speakers – prof. Maciej Kisilowski of Central European University in Vienna and prof. Anna Wojciuk of the University of Warsaw – will discuss the significance of the Polish election while resisting the temptation to declare an(other) democratic “end of history.” Instead, they will focus on what can be done to minimize the risk of a future authoritarian recurrence.

They will start by analyzing the possible causes of that unexpected victory. Contrasting the Polish case with other examples of electoral authoritarianism, they will discuss: the role of the US and the EU in preserving democracy in Poland, COVID-related economic and political crises, freedom and pluralism of the media, civil society, and the strategies adopted by democratic opposition.

The second part of the presentation will cover “Umówmy się na Polskę” [“Let’s Agree on Poland”] – a recently published volume edited by Kisilowski and Wojciuk in which a diverse group of 28 Polish intellectuals, representing views from the left to the conservative right, present a comprehensive proposal for a democratic constitutional reform. Acclaimed as “the most important book about Polish politics since 1989” by Poland’s main “Polityka” opinion weekly and as “a decisive step forward in the reconstruction of Polish democracy” by Prof. Bruce Ackerman of Yale University, the volume advocates for a new social contract – a set of constitutional rules accepted by citizens of both progressive and conservative political leanings. The authors argue that the key to developing such rules, and thus to the emergence of a genuinely consolidated democracy in Poland, is greater involvement of provincial and municipal governments, as well as citizens, in the mechanisms of governing the country.

Poland’s deep, geographically asymmetrical polarization makes the country’s challenges remarkably relevant for the US audience. The discussion of the Kisilowski-Wojciuk constitutional proposal for Poland may therefore elucidate the difficult choices that democrats around the world face when dealing with the modern wave of right-wing authoritarian populism.

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The seminar series for fall 2023 explores the future of African land, agriculture and food, digging into the contestations, conflicting and converging visions from a wide range of perspectives. How might land be used, valued and lived in, across cities, rural communities, forests, deserts and grasslands on the continent in the future? Who is proposing different visions of land futures in Africa, what are the histories, politics, socio-cultural, environmental and economic implications of these potential visions? In one of the regions with the most youthful populations, how are young people considering possible futures? What are ways that land, agriculture and food systems could be resilient, healthy, ecological, thriving and just? Can there be a decolonial agriculture and food future in Africa that celebrates Indigenous and local foodways?

The seminar series for fall 2023 explores the future of African land, agriculture and food, digging into the contestations, conflicting and converging visions from a wide range of perspectives. How might land be used, valued and lived in, across cities, rural communities, forests, deserts and grasslands on the continent in the future? Who is proposing different visions of land futures in Africa, what are the histories, politics, socio-cultural, environmental and economic implications of these potential visions? In one of the regions with the most youthful populations, how are young people considering possible futures? What are ways that land, agriculture and food systems could be resilient, healthy, ecological, thriving and just? Can there be a decolonial agriculture and food future in Africa that celebrates Indigenous and local foodways?

Seminar in Critical Development Studies co-hosted by the Graduate Field of Development Studies, Department of Global Development, the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, the South Asia Program, and the Department of Anthropology

Abstract:

Even in north India cities, with their centuries-old practices of living in a hot, dry climate, global warming poses a new challenge. My talk focuses on the shifts brought about by climate change and how they interact with patterns of accelerated urban growth since the 1990s. In particular, I will examine how living conditions are shaped by inequalities in access to decent work and housing, exacerbated by economic liberalization policies. In this context, how does climate change affect the social experience of urban life? From individual households to neighborhoods to wider public spaces, how do people understand and deal with heat? I hope to suggest some avenues for future research by reflecting on my work in Delhi, India.

About the speaker:

Amita Baviskar is a Professor of Environmental Studies and Sociology and Anthropology at Ashoka University (India). Her research and teaching address the cultural politics of environment and development in rural and urban India. She focuses on the role of social inequality and identities in natural resource conflicts. Currently, she is working on the politics of food and changing agrarian environments in Madhya Pradesh and studying the social experience of air pollution in Delhi.

After studying Economics and Sociology at the University of Delhi, she received a PhD in Development Sociology from Cornell University. Besides working at the Department of Sociology, University of Delhi, and at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi, she has been a visiting scholar at several universities including Stanford, Cornell, Yale, SciencesPo, University of California at Berkeley and the University of Cape Town.

Her first book In the Belly of the River: Tribal Conflicts over Development in the Narmada Valley and other writings explore the themes of resource rights, popular resistance and discourses of environmentalism. Her recent publications include the edited books Elite and Everyman: The Cultural Politics of the Indian Middle Classes (with Raka Ray) and First Garden of the Republic: Nature on the President’s Estate. In January 2020, she published Uncivil City: Ecology, Equity and the Commons in Delhi.

Her contributions to developing the field of environmental sociology in India and to the study of social movements have been recognised by her peers. She was awarded the 2005 Malcolm Adiseshiah Award for Distinguished Contributions to Development Studies, the 2008 VKRV Rao Prize for Social Science Research, and the 2010 Infosys Prize for Social Sciences.

Are you interested in the intersection of mental health and culture, global health, and community engagement? Do you want to gain field research skills and learn about indigenous communities in South India’s beautiful and fragile Nilgiris Biosphere Reserve? If so, the Cornell-Keystone Nilgiris Field Learning Program might be for you!