A community book read with Alice Beban, author of Unwritten Rule: State-Making through Land Reform in Cambodia and winner of the 2023 Benda Prize.

This event is open to current graduate students at any university, but participants must read the book first to facilitate an active conversation!

Alice Beban’s Unwritten Rule: State-Making through Land Reform in Cambodia is a first-rate study of the politics of land redistribution. Challenging the idea that land reform strengthens land tenure, Unwritten Rule shows that instead it entangles citizens in patron-client relations, creates anxiety, and actually undermines title to land. Citizens in Cambodia must contend with a state that, Beban argues, is not so much lacking in state capacity but actively making things illegible through obfuscation, secrecy, and unwritten rules. Through multiple methods, including in-depth ethnography, survey research, as well as comparative analysis within Cambodia, Unwritten Rule provides a sharp, unique, and counterintuitive perspective on land reforms in an autocratic regime. This is a superb book from which political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, and historians can all gain deep and grounded insights.

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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?

Join us for an online discussion on Southeast Asian Manuscript collections held by institutions around the United States, including the University of California, Berkeley and the Library of Congress.

Dr. Trent Walker will share his experiences navigating the archival landscape of Southeast Asian Studies, covering how manuscript traditions from Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand appear in American libraries and the divergent approaches that researchers can take to incorporate these collections into their own scholarship. This webinar is hosted by the Committee on Research Materials on Southeast Asia (CORMOSEA), the Southeast Asia Program (SEAP), and the Southeast Asia Digital Library (SEADL).

Trent Walker is Assistant Professor of Southeast Asian Studies in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor. A specialist in Buddhism, literature, and music in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam, he is the author of Until Nirvana’s Time: Buddhist Songs from Cambodia and co-edited a major anthology, Out of the Shadows of Angkor: Cambodian Poetry, Prose, and Performance through the Ages. Recent publications include articles on Thai literary history, Lao and Shan exegesis, Theravada nuns, Pali-vernacular homiletics, Khmer epigraphy, and Vietnamese Buddhist translation. Trent also served as Director of Preservation and Lead Scholar for the Khmer Manuscript Heritage Project, a initiative of the Buddhist Digital Resource Center, in collaboration with the École française d'Extrême-Orient and with generous support from A Khmer Buddhist Foundation, to digitize over 1.5 million pages of Khmer, Pali, and Thai manuscripts from Cambodia.

LACS Film Series

La ilusión viaja en tranvía (1954) is a wry social comedy from renowned filmmaker Luis Buñuel's Mexican period. Heartbroken that their favorite streetcar has been decommissioned, two Mexico City transit workers get drunk and take the streetcar out for a final—eventful—joyride. The film reveals a less well known side of Buñuel's work. Often thought of as a touchstone of surrealist and avant-garde filmmaking who floundered in commercial movie systems, Buñuel shows his deft and mischievous mastery of the tropes and conventions of Mexican popular cinema.

Director's Bio:

Born in 1900 in Calanda, Spain, Luis Buñuel is widely regarded as one of the most important filmmakers of the 20th century. Together with Salvador Dalí, he is credited with having pioneered surrealist filmmaking. From 1946-1953, Buñuel worked primarily on commercial films in Mexico. He died in Mexico City in 1983, having become a Mexican citizen in 1949.

The Department of Near Eastern Studies will offer a panel discussion, “Understanding Events in Israel – Palestine” from 5-6:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 26 in Room 165 of McGraw Hall (Note: Location has changed to allow for greater occupancy, but seating is limited)

Panelists will provide historical context for the recent developments in the region and respond to questions from the audience.

Panelists will include:

Ross Brann, Milton R. Konvitz Professor of Judeo-Islamic Studies & Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow, Department of Near Eastern Studies (A&S);

Alexandra Blackman, assistant professor, Department of Government (A&S); and

Paul Kohlbry, postdoctoral associate, Department of Anthropology (A&S).

Deborah Starr, professor and chair in the Department of Near Eastern Studies in the College of Arts & Sciences, will moderate the panel.

Note: Register for the lecture/conference at the following link by October 22: https://forms.gle/hEZsdEDGomtZgqo47

The lower Lurín Valley of central coastal Peru is the area most abundant in archaeological khipus. The montane upper Lurín is the area most abundant in patrimonial khipus. What could this mean? The Quechua-language mythohistory of the Lurín Valley written c.1608 limelights high-Andean herders as protagonist yauyos. Fighting down the Lurín Valley they master lower- and mid-valley yunca settlements, even to the outliers of Pachacámac, where their Inka allies would build religious hegemony. Yet the Huarochirí Manuscript is really more a yunca-oriented work than a yauyo-centric one; yuncas get 38 mentions, Inkas 33, and Yauyos 11. Now that the archaeology of the Lurín and nearby rivers has become profuse, we wonder who ‘conquered’ (atiy) whom. Was khipu use imposed on late prehispanic Yauyos by the Incas of Pachacámac? I will argue instead for a more complex, earlier history involving the coastal culture known as Ychsma. Ychsma also created khipus – “anomalous” khipus, whose peculiarities give clues about ethnographic khipus’ puzzling non-Inka attributes.

Frank Salomon, ethnographer and ethnohistorian of the Andes, is the author of At the Mountains’ Altar: Anthropology of Religion in an Andean Community (2017) as well as other books including The Huarochiri Manuscript, a Testament of Ancient and Colonial Andean Religion (1991), the Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas – South America (1999), The Cord Keepers (2004), and a forthcoming book on the Quechua-language songs of Rapaz village. A past president of the American Society for Ethnohistory, he has held NSF, Guggenheim, SAR, and NSF fellowships. He received the 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Society for Ethnohistory.

Frank Salomon is the John V. Murra Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Join this walking tour around central campus to visit important sites that showcase the deep history between Cornell and China. Learn more about how modern Chinese language resulted from an overturned canoe in Beebe Lake, visit buildings of historical importance, and hear stories showcasing vibrant Cornell-China historical ties. This outdoor walking tour will happen rain or shine except in case of hazardous weather, in which case, registrants will emailed at least 1 hour in advance if the tour will shift to the next day at the same time. Limited to 15 participants. Co-hosted by the Cornell China Center and tour leader Liren Zheng from the Cornell Library's Wason Collection. Register here.

This talk considers Iran’s relations with America at a time when global concerns over racial politics, gender relations, and social inequality dominated world headlines. Iran's growing engagement with civil rights and gender relations came at an awkward moment in its history, as the ruling monarchy took on themes of social import despite its ironic legacy of political dictatorship. As in America, Iranians dealt with the role of the police in society; the avant-garde in art; and a sexual revolution of their own. However, as my research will show, the bipolar world that Iran navigated in diplomacy sometimes fell apart in the intellectual and political spaces that grappled with race, gender, and social change.