Artistic freedom is a fundamental democratic right.

Creative expression, from poetry to street art, theater, and literature, is often at the vanguard of political resistance and change, and so artists are some of the first to be silenced. In this panel, speakers discuss their own experiences as artists in authoritarian contexts where their ability to produce art was violently suppressed.

These artists have all found haven at Cornell. Their art speaks to the trauma of authoritarianism and the hope for change.

Speakers:

Sharifa “Elja” Sharifi, Afghan visiting scholar and 2022–23 Artist Protection Fund Fellow at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art

Pedro X. Molina, Nicaraguan political cartoonist and visiting critic with the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies

Khadija Monis '24, Afghan student, poet and artist

Rachel Beatty Riedl (moderator), director of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies and John S. Knight Professor of International Studies

The event is sponsored by the Johnson Museum and Global Cornell as part of the university’s theme this year on The Indispensable Condition: Freedom of Expression at Cornell. The event will be held in person and livestreamed.

"Reverse Design and its Role in Curricular and Programmatic Articulation"
Catherine Baumann
Senior Instructional Professor and Director, University of Chicago Language Center

Reverse design, also called backward design, is a framework for curricular planning that begins "at the end." Targeted outcomes and their assessment form the basis for making the many decisions that belong to the process of curricular design and development. In this workshop, a reverse design model will be introduced, and its components defined and described. Multiple concrete examples of how reverse design was applied to solve curricular challenges at the course, course sequence, and programmatic level will be shared.

Bio: Catherine C. Baumann is a Senior Instructional Professor and Director of the University of Chicago Language Center (CLC). She received her Ph.D. in Second Languages and Cultures Education at the University of Minnesota, specializing in reading comprehension and language testing. She directed the German language program at the University of Chicago from 1999-2019, and now oversees all programs in the CLC. She consults for language programs in higher education on a variety of curricular and assessment-related issues.

This event will be held in person in G25 Stimson and will also be streamed live over Zoom (registration required). Join us at the LRC or on Zoom.

The event is free and open to the public. Campus visitors and members of the public must adhere to Cornell's public health requirements for events.

In Remnants, tattooed and scar-bearing bodies reveal a larger history, as the lived trauma of genocide is understood through bodies, skin, and—in what remains of those lives a century afterward—bones. Gathering individual memories and archival fragments of women survivors, Elyse Semerdjian offers a feminist interpretation of the Armenian Genocide, and issues a call to break open the archival record in order to embrace affect and memory.

Elyse Semerdjian is the Robert Aram and Marianne Kaloosdian and Stephen and Marian Mugar Chair of Armenian Genocide Studies at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University. She was a past recipient of Cornell University’s Society for the Humanities Fellowship on the theme of "Skin" from 2016-2017.

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.