Join us October 13-14 for a two-day conference featuring distinguished Cornell faculty, prominent economists, and Indian corporate leaders. We will delve into the latest advances in the Indian economy and its challenges, anchored under the theme "India's Economy in a Changing Global Landscape."

View and download the final conference program

A collaboration between CRADLE, a research group in the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, and the Department of Economics, the India Conference promises a multifaceted perspective that spans economics, politics, and policy.

The Indian economy stands at a critical juncture. With advanced economies experiencing a slowdown, India has emerged as an economy with many possibilities. However, the nation faces its own set of challenges. The rapid integration of new digital technologies is reshaping the economic landscape and transforming the nature of work, while societal divisions are becoming more pronounced. In this pivotal moment, India's decisions will be significant in terms of economic, political, and social aspects.

The conference brings together some of the finest intellects to examine India's historical, present, and future trajectories, delving into micro-level foundations and macroeconomic policies.

Note: Registration is not required for in-person attendance.

Register for live-streamed sessions:

Session 1 (October 13 at 10:00 ET): Naushad Forbes & Arvind SubramanianSession 6 (October 14 at 9:30 ET): Narayana Murthy

Yanjie Huang , Chinese Studies, National University of Singapore

Cornell Contemporary Lecture Series

This talk discusses the rise of the Communist wartime monetary regime in post-1945 Manchuria (Dongbei). From the Sino-Japanese to the Korean War, the Chinese Communists were under constant pressure to balance wartime spending and inflations. Through a series of institutional innovations, Communist financiers such as Xue Muqiao and Chen Yun established a new monetary system suited to permanent military mobilization by backing the official currency with a basket of essential commodities and adapting the monetary-trade system to geopolitical situations. The Dongbei experience was especially critical since it marked the transition of the Communist monetary system from a wartime currency system of military mobilization to a peacetime system under a planned economy. Based on archival collections, surveys, and memoirs, this study examines how the Communist regime successfully exploited the institutional legacies of Japanese imperialism and the geopolitics of the early Cold War to secure a sound monetary basis in the decisive struggle against the KMT in post-1945 Manchuria.

China: The Central State and All Under Heaven is the theme of this semester's CCCI lecture series directed by Professor Yue (Mara) Du, History, Cornell. At the core of the “China Dream” and China’s rise in power on the global stage is the Chinese Communist Party’s proclaimed role in the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation”—a restoration of China’s historical glory and its rightful place as a “Central State” of “All under Heaven.” To achieve this goal, China’s current leader Xi Jinping requires the party “not to forget the original intention,” which could be interpreted as either a return to Marxist-Leninist fundamentalism, to Mao’s integration of “Marx” and Legalism of China's first imperial dynasty, to Republican ethnonationalism, or to state Confucianism combined with territorial expansion in imperial China. As China’s past looms large in its present, understanding the historical relationship between the "Central State" and "All under Heaven" is critical for our analysis of China’s economy, society, politics, and international engagement at the present and in the future.

The Cornell Contemporary China Initiative lecture series is co-sponsored by The Levinson China and Asia-Pacific Studies Program, Cornell Society for the Humanities, and the Department of History.

Talk by Yunus Sozen

In the last decade, Turkey has not only become the largest refugee recipient country, but also one of the major immigrant destination countries in the world. All this happened during the rule of the right-wing populist Justice and Development Party which also took the lead in the breakdown of Turkey’s defective democracy and the establishment of an electoral authoritarian regime in its place. In this paper, I critically evaluate the immigration and right-wing populism literatures based on an exploration of how the right-wing populist government in Turkey conceptualizes the Turkish nation and citizenship. I argue that the conceptual frameworks utilized in these literatures lead to interpretive frameworks that misunderstand the particular conception of the nation by Turkey’s right-wing authoritarian populist rulers and their pro-immigration and citizenship policies.

Anna Bugaeva, Institute of Arts and Sciences, Tokyo University of Science

This talk will be introduced by John Whitman, Linguistics.

In historical times, Ainu, the only non-Japonic language of Japan and a lone witness of earlier cultures in Japan, was spoken by the people inhabiting the northernmost Japanese island of Hokkaido, the southern part of Sakhalin Island, and the Kuril Islands. Traditionally, the Ainu were hunter-gatherers who eventually faced the modern colonial expansion of Japan and Russia. This expansion ultimately led to the loss of their language in the early 21st century. In 2008, the Japanese government finally recognized the Ainu people as an indigenous ethnic group. Subsequently, in 2019, the Act on Promoting Measures to Realize a Society in Which the Pride of the Ainu People is Respected was enacted to ban discrimination against the Ainu and to provide grants for culture and language-related projects. Japan has taken longer than many other countries to acknowledge the contributions of its indigenous minorities to the nation and to recognize their linguistic and cultural aspirations. This talk will discuss the significance, within a Japanese context, of the legal recognition of Ainu as an indigenous language.

Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program (LACS) Seminar Series, Co-sponsored by: The Communication Department.

The field of environmental communication has undergone substantial development in recent decades. Scholars from rich nations have predominantly spurred this growth, with a pronounced emphasis on climate change. The input from scholars situated in other global regions, such as those hailing from Latin American countries, continues to linger on the periphery of worldwide dialogues. This marginalization limits the potential of insights derived from research pertaining to and originating from southern regions that can enhance international discussions about environmental communication.

This talk examines the structural impediments alongside epistemological and ontological presumptions that obscure Latin American participation in the environmental communication field, drawing upon ideas, initiatives, and experiences in this region. It delves into factors such as historical background, worldview, the dynamics of colonialism and resistance, institutional frameworks, and cultural influences to emphasize the necessity of comprehending these intricate elements for advancing environmental communication research.

Bruno Takahashi Dr. Bruno Takahashi is the Brandt Professor of Environmental Communication in the School of Journalism and AgBioResearch at Michigan State University. He is also research director of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism. He studies the communication of environmental and science issues in Latin America and among marginalized US populations. Bruno is from Perú and received his BA in communication from the Universidad de Lima and MS and Ph.D. in environmental science from SUNY ESF.

COMMColloquium

Co-sponsored with the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program

Context Matters: Insights From Environmental Communication Research in Latin America

Bruno Takahashi, Professor, Michigan State University

1pm in 102 Mann

Reception to follow in the Hub

The field of environmental communication has undergone substantial development in recent decades. Scholars from rich nations have predominantly spurred this growth, with a pronounced emphasis on climate change. The input from scholars situated in other global regions, such as those hailing from Latin American countries, continues to linger on the periphery of worldwide dialogues. This marginalization limits the potential of insights derived from research pertaining to and originating from southern regions that can enhance international discussions about environmental communication.

This talk examines the structural impediments alongside epistemological and ontological presumptions that obscure Latin American participation in the environmental communication field, drawing upon ideas, initiatives, and experiences in this region. It delves into factors such as historical background, worldview, the dynamics of colonialism and resistance, institutional frameworks, and cultural influences to emphasize the necessity of comprehending these intricate elements for advancing environmental communication research.

Dr. Bruno Takahashi is the Brandt Professor of Environmental Communication in the School of Journalism and AgBioResearch at Michigan State University. He is also research director of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism. He studies the communication of environmental and science issues in Latin America and among marginalized US populations. Bruno is from Perú and received his BA in communication from the Universidad de Lima and MS and Ph.D. in environmental science from SUNY ESF.

We are pleased to host Haun Saussy, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago to present the text-reading, "Kang Youwei's Roman Diaries (1904)" for this Classical Chinese Colloquium.

Professor Saussy's primary teaching and research interests include classical Chinese poetry and commentary, literary theory, comparative study of oral traditions, problems of translation, pre-twentieth-century media history, and ethnography and ethics of medical care.

To view Professor Saussy's CV, click here.

To view Professor Saussy's personal website, click here.

To see Professor Saussy's Google Scholar page, click here.

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.

The East Asia Program is honored to have Haun Saussy, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago give this year's Hu Shih Distinguished Lecture: "Exile As Formative Experience in Classical Chinese Poetry."

The “myth of loyalty and dissent” (as Laurence Schneider put it) surrounding the figure of Qu Yuan has structured a great many self-representations by cast-off officials. But when poets banished to the margins of the empire adopt Qu Yuan as a source of style and allusion, the result is, often enough, a gain in descriptive and evocative power. By calling the experience of exile “formative” in the cases of Xie Lingyun 謝靈運, Shen Quanqi 沈全期, Song Zhiwen 宋之問, and Su Shi 蘇軾, I aim to put biography in second place. What occupies the foreground is rather the fashioning of transpersonal roles and attitudes that could be adopted by later poets— replicating the author-function that had made Qu Yuan such a powerful reference.

The East Asia Program's 2023-2024 Annual Hu Shih Distinguished Lecture is co-sponsored by the Departments of Asian Studies, History, and the Cornell Society for the Humanities.

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Professor Saussy's primary teaching and research interests include classical Chinese poetry and commentary, literary theory, comparative study of oral traditions, problems of translation, pre-twentieth-century media history, and ethnography and ethics of medical care.

To view Professor Saussy's CV, click here.

To view Professor Saussy's personal website, click here.

To see Professor Saussy's Google Scholar page, click here.

In 2014 on the 100th anniversary of Hu Shih's graduation from Cornell, EAP initiated an annual distinguished lecture in honor of the philosopher and statesman, Hu Shih. Leading scholars of Chinese and East Asian studies are invited to speak on critical issues in their field of research. These lectures are archived as a resource for the Cornell community and beyond. Hu Shih Distinguished Lecture videos and programs are permanently archived in the Cornell eCommons archive.

Learn about Hu Shih here.

Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program (LACS) Seminar Series

Suriname is a country in the northern part of South America. Having a tropical humid climate, about 93% of the country is covered by rainforest. This is also the area where many of the indigenous and tribal communities (descendants from run away African slaves) live.

One of these tribal communities, the Saamaka, is situated in the Upper Suriname River Area and consists of over 70 villages that mainly lie along the Suriname river (one of Suriname’s most important rivers). This community has been practicing agriculture in the form of shifting cultivation for almost 300 years. This form of cultivation can be described as a piece of land (forest) that is first cleared and afterwards various crops such as cassava, banana, peanuts, rice and sweet potato are planted over a period of 2-3 years and afterwards the farmer clears a new plot to repeat the same steps due to a decline in soil fertility and reduced crop yield.

Just like the urban areas in Suriname, the Saamaka have noticed a change in the climate in the form of prolonged periods of draught and heavy rainfall which often results in flooding of the villages and farm land.

In an effort to adapt and mitigate these phenomena, this community with the help of Tropenbos Suriname (local NGO) has started to adapt climate smart agricultural practices in the form of agroforestry.

Humans and the Environment in the Coastal & Canal Zone of Panama:

Scientists are worried about the way several external factors are contributing to the deterioration along Panama’s central Caribbean rainforest and coastal-marine ecosystems and preventing recovery in areas affected by contamination because they are practically doomed by anthropogenic development. If unplanned development continues on the rise, the ecosystem could continue to survive in previously healthy areas, but without any sustainable and substantial recovery.

The University of Panama is trying to implement a permanent system of scientific interdisciplinary researches in order to conserve the natural resources in Colón province (mangrove forest, sandy beaches, sea grasses, coral reefs, rainforest). These researches have a great priority for the Country of Panama for three reasons: first, due to the proximity of the area to the Panama Canal watershed; second, because Colón is located on the Caribbean side of Panama, with the second largest commercial city of the country (urban and industrial area) and communities claimed for sustainable development alternatives; third, to provide a research site for Panamanian and international scientists to implement environmental education, international center for studies around the unique ecosystem that is protecting Colon City and surrounding communities of the frequent floods in wet season and also serve both as a natural break water and wildlife refuge.

Javier Hurtado Yow is an Environmental Biologist & Educator with expertise in environmental sciences related to human rights. He has a Master’s in Environmental Management of Tropical Ecosystems obtained at Paris Tech Institute, France. He’s Professor of the Practice at the University of Panama and Regional Manager at the Panama's Human Rights office (Defensoría del Pueblo). His goals revolve around enhancing capacities in natural resource and environmental management in the interoceanic zone of the Panama Canal. His aim is to create and develop initiatives and policies that improve the sustainability of socioeconomic and environmental conditions in provinces outside the capital of the country, including Colon, western Panama, and other regions.

Talk by Taieb Berrada

This talk will deal with the way Moroccan literature written in French creates a political space challenging the patriarchal establishment by reinterpreting foundational myths in Islam. We will discuss two political and symbolic forces at work in this type of literature: expressing one’s self in the language of the French colonial Other and narrating marginal sexual relationships in Morocco under the harsh dictatorship of Hassan II. It is the interplay of these two aspects that leads to the creation of a new narrative about sexual identities. By doing so, it reveals the instability of a model of identification subjected to a normalizing sexual apparatus controlling bodies and minds in a society where for example homosexual acts are still punishable by law. I will argue that writings by authors such as Abdellah Taïa, Nedjma and others create revised sexual identities, which become emancipated from the Western Oedipal complex while at the same time looking for alternative interpretations of Islamic traditions. Hence, those sexual identities call for a reevaluation of the normativity imposed by the king who is using his power based on a patriarchal interpretation of religious legitimacy in view of political gain.