The program will feature music from Latin America, including the works of Brazilian composers Heitor Villa-Lobos, Claudio Santoro, Cesar Guerra-Peixe, and Argentinian composers Esteban Benzecry, Astor Piazzolla, and Luis Gianneo. Violinist and PhD Candidate in Music and Sound Studies, Rafael Torralvo joins Duo Portinari for a set featuring Armorial music from northeastern Brazil.

This event is funded in part by the Cornell Council for the Arts (CCA) and by a USIFL grant to LACS from the U.S. Department of Education.

Formed by Peter Pas, Viola Soloist of the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, and Soledad Yaya Principal Harpist of the Goiânia Philharmonic Orchestra, Duo Portinari performed throughout the Americas, Europe, and Australia. Duo Portinari’s recording of Michael Kurek's Sonata for Viola and Harp reached #1 on the Billboard Classical chart in 2017. Duo Portinari’s current project includes a new CD featuring music of Latin American composers. The name of the duo pays homage to the Brazilian painter Cândido Portinari.

Soledad Yaya attended the Cordoba Conservatory of Music, continuing her studies in Buenos Aires with Oscar do Campo, and later in Paris under the tutelage of Marielle Nordmann. She formerly held a position with the São Paulo Experimental Orchestra of the Municipal Theater of São Paulo and currently serves as a Professor of Harp at the Baccarelli Institute in São Paulo.

Peter Pas attended Indiana University, where he studied with Atar Arad. He later received the prestigious Performer's Certificate for his Senior Recital from that institution. He concluded his studies at Yale University with Jesse Levine. In addition to his position as Viola Soloist of the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, Peter Pas also serves as violist of the OSESP Quartet, a chamber ensemble formed by the principal players of the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, and Professor of Viola and Chamber Music at the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra Academy. Peter Pas is sponsored by Thomastik-Infeld and Bam Cases.

Born in Brazil and educated in the United States, Rafael Torralvo holds a BM and a MM degree in violin performance from James Madison University and West Chester University of Pennsylvania, respectively. He is an alumnus from the Frost School of Music, at the University of Miami, where he received a MM degree in musicology. Rafael also holds a MA in Arts from Cornell University where he currently is a PhD Candidate in Music and Sound Studies. Rafael has an active career as a violinist and chamber musician, appearing in concert engagements throughout Europe, the United States, and South America. He is the founder and Artistic Director of the "Encontro Internacional de Cordas." In recognition of his efforts to enhance the cultural life of his community, Rafael received the Fumagalli Trophy, the most prestigious award bequeathed by the city of Limeira, his hometown.

The concert will take place on Wednesday, April 12 at 5 pm in the Common Room of Alice Cook House, on West Campus. The event is free and open to the public.

Learn about the state of the anti-military movement in Myanmar from an expert panel, hosted by the Cornell University Southeast Asia Program (SEAP) in both English and Burmese on March 27, 2023. Featured speakers will include members of the National Unity Government of Myanmar and a former senior State Department official. The morning panel discussion (9:30 am to 12:00 pm) will be conducted in English and the afternoon panel discussion (1:30 pm to 4:00 pm) will be in Burmese language.

The morning panel will be held in the Taylor Room, Statler Hotel, and the afternoon panel will be held at the Kahin Center. Participants are also welcome to join by Zoom.

This event is sponsored by the Southeast Asia Program (SEAP), the Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, the Department of Government, the Department of Asian Studies, the Berger Program, and the Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies. This event is partially funded by the U.S. Department of Education as part of SEAP’s designation as a National Resource Center.

On February 1, 2021, the Myanmar military removed the country’s democratically re-elected government led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi from office in a coup d’état. By April of that year, the military had formed the State Administrative Council (SAC) to rule the country. In response, millions of ordinary people of Myanmar have risen up against the SAC and the renewed imposition of military rule. The ensuing crackdown from the SAC has thrown a once fledgling democracy into chaos. Since the coup, the Myanmar military and police have reportedly killed thousands of civilians and have arbitrarily detained thousands more. As conflict has erupted across the country, civilian populations have been bombed, properties have been razed, and hundreds of thousands of people are internally displaced. The junta has also failed to hold the new elections it had promised.

Amidst the continuing spring revolution and the civil disobedience movement, the National Unity Government (NUG) was formed on April 16, 2021 by a group of elected lawmakers and members of the parliament deposed by the coup, ethnic representatives and civil society activists. The NUG functions as a parallel government, and opposes the military by seeking support from Ethnic Armed Groups (EAOs) across Myanmar and by seeking support domestically and abroad. The NUG’s vision of state and nation building is designed to be more inclusive and representative of popular demands than the SAC junta, and seeks to provide the country’s many ethnic minority groups what they have demanded since independence. The NUG has also created People’s Defense Force (PDF) to protect civilians from military attacks.

The international community has condemned the violence perpetrated by the Myanmar military against its own civilians. Most recently, on December 21, 2022 the U.N. Security Council adopted a historic resolution on Myanmar denouncing the human rights violations carried out by the Myanmar military government since the coup d’état. In the United States, President Biden signed the Burma Act into law on December 23, 2022 to implement increased pressure on the military and provide more aid to the people of Myanmar.

As the violence in Myanmar and the war in Ukraine make clear, the rise of autocratic leaders and their actions pose a threat to democracy and fundamental freedoms around the world. The esteemed speakers in both panels will discuss how the anti-military movement formed and grew into a nationwide uprising, how this dissent is sustained, and what this movement envisions for a new Myanmar.

Featured Speakers will include:

U Moe Zaw Oo, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, National Unity Government

U Kyaw Moe Tun, Permanent Representative of Myanmar to the United Nations

Ms. Priscilla Clapp, Senior Advisor to the United States Institute of Peace; and former Chief of Mission in Burma from 1999-2002

Moderators:

May Sabe Phyu, Visiting Fellow, Cornell University Law School

Magnus Fiskejo, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Cornell University

Registration Link: https://cglink.me/2cm/r2042287

The Cornell S.C. Johnson College of Business Emerging Markets Theme, in collaboration with China Institute for Economic Research (CICER), the Cornell China Center, and the Emerging Markets Institute, brings together scholars to provide thought leadership on the role of emerging markets – and emerging market multinationals – in the global economy.

On 5/22, Caroline Fry, University of Hawaii

Registration Link: https://cglink.me/2cm/r2042286

The Cornell S.C. Johnson College of Business Emerging Markets Theme, in collaboration with China Institute for Economic Research (CICER), the Cornell China Center, and the Emerging Markets Institute, brings together scholars to provide thought leadership on the role of emerging markets – and emerging market multinationals – in the global economy.

On 5/19, Mike Peng, UT-Dallas

The keynote of the day:

"Biophilia Now: Time for Imagining Alternatives to Techno- and Bio-Orientalism" by Rachel Lee, Professor of English, Gender Studies, and the Institute of Society and Genetics, UCLA.

Are you attending in person? If so, you must rsvp here. Space is limited.

We encourage in-person participation but for those who are unable to make it, please see virtual registration below.

The title of this lecture draws inspiration from what feminist historians call the Wages for Housework movement. Despite their express slogan around “wages,” the utopian desire carried forward by Selma James and Maria dalla Costa involves less the free-market payment for raising kids, caring for the elderly, tending to the sick, preparing food, etcetera, and more an almost unimaginable “time for what we will.” This “time for what we will” is not already blocked out for usefulness—e.g., to serve one’s side hustle--or even for rest and recovery from the depletions of neoliberal capital. Rather, it bespeaks an unassigned time to fritter away, to dally and daydream, and to fantasize about what might happen in the idyll of becoming (non-pejoratively) idle. Significantly, Wages for Housework construed this “time for what we will” as what is owed to—rather than simply granted to or contractually specified as compensation for—reproducers (aka reproductive laborers). The danger for the status quo in this demand—this “time for what we will”--lies in its holding space to proliferate plural and counterfactual (i.e., postwork) imaginings of present society.

Humanities scholar Rachel Lee points to artwork choreographed around smelling, singing, and sensorily dwelling in and around loss, grief, and toxic landscapes as, counterintuitively, positive sketches for types of actions that might be indulged in--and which might save lives--if we could entertain and flex our daydreaming (rather than doom-scrolling) muscles. Rather than ask how do we heal from resurgent biophobia and its catalyzing of anti-Asian violence, this talk proposes the plural and oftentimes conflicting imaginings of Chang Rae Lee, Anicka Yi [and possibly also “the Daniels”—aka Kwan & Scheinert) as hopeful alternatives to the toggle between techno-orientalism and bio-orientalism characterizing our post-/still- Covid-19 moment.

Bio: Rachel C. Lee, Professor of English, Gender Studies, and the Institute of Society and Genetics, UCLA, is the author of The Exquisite Corpse of Asian America: Biopolitics, Biosociality and Posthuman Ecologies (2014), editor of The Routledge Companion to Asian and Pacific Islander Literature (2014), and a founding editor of Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience. Currently, Lee is PI on Oral Histories of Environmental Illness: a collection of 80+ interviews of individuals who have, treat, or advocate on behalf of those with “contested illnesses” (e.g. multiple chemical sensitivity, chronic Lyme, mold-related fibromyalgia, heavy-metal intoxication, chronic fatigue and the like).

Thursday, May 11, 10:30 a.m.

Keynote: "Biophilia Now: Time for Imagining Alternatives to Techno- and Bio-Orientalism" by Rachel Lee, Professor of English, Gender Studies, and the Institute of Society and Genetics, UCLA.

Session 1 “Sensoria” 1:00-2:30 p.m.

Katie Yook (Curator, NY): “Sensoria: Evoking the Intangible”Se Young Au (Artist, CA):“Olfaction, Embodiment, and Perception”KimSu Theiler (Artist, NY):“Orientally Challenged”Skye Jin (or Jette Hye Jin Mortensen) (Artist, Writer, Curator, Copenhagen): “Hidden Epigenetic Trauma & Art as Site for Healing and Ritual"Jung Joon Lee (Rhode Island School of Design, Society for the Humanities fellow at Cornell University): discussant Session 2 “Transnational and Transmedial Approach to the Body Issues” 3:00-4:30 p.m.

Walter Byongsok Chon (Ithaca College): “Theatricalized Bodies on the Post-Dramatic Stage”Bonnie Chung (Cornell University): “The Songs of Two Islands of East Asia: Collaborative Listening and Counterarchival Impulses in Green Island (2016) and The Mermaid from Jeju (2019)”Abel Song Han (Cornell University): “Healing with Poison and Metaphor: On Bio-mimesis Horror”Paul McQuade (Cornell University): "A Dreamed Biology: Soni Kum’s ‘Morning Dew’ and Jayro Bustamante’s ‘La Llorona’”Jomy Abraham (Visiting Scholar, Cornell University): “Walking with their Dead: Biophobia and Public Protests of Farmers in India”Jun Matsuda (Visiting Scholar, Cornell University): “Police/Military Violence and Biophobia: The Intersectionality of "Asian Bodies" and Colonialism”About the Biophobia Symposium

Aversion to certain groups or statuses of the body is not just an emotion but a richly social, cultural, and political phenomenon, as it, by invoking bodily responses, functions to patrol social boundaries and norms, such as righteousness and cleanliness. The feeling’s immediacy to the body is the basis of its social power. In The Cultural Politics of Emotion(2014), Sara Ahmed situates disgust (“bad taste”) in the colonial context where the colonized bodies were subject to the imperialist politics of “what gets eaten,” and are, at the same time, regarded to stoke the “fear of contamination” to the European white bodies. Ahmed’s politicizing of negative emotions still holds strong relevance, especially regarding the recently exacerbating hate crimes based on gender, race, ethnicity, religion, health condition, and political orientation, which often tag along a profound sense of disgust and essentialist rhetoric on body types. Notably, the #IAmNotAVirus campaigns against the anti-Asian hate crimes entailed by the recent pandemic exemplify how the feelings of terror and disgust effectively turned Asian bodies into a composite of a submicroscopic agent, the “origin” of the disease, and the repugnant bodies.

This symposium proposes biophobia (aversion to bodily matter) as a critical framework to unravel the complex relationship between negative emotions and post/colonial body politics in Asian and transnational contexts. Biophobia, as a composite word, embodies an acute connectivity between body issues and the public anxiety that is often symptomatic of a given society’s constraints over the notions of the healthy and the normal, which has proved to be a global phenomenon. Accordingly, while the symposium’s case studies and materials come from Korean and diasporic Korean cultural situations, biophobia helps recognize the inter-disciplinary, inter-regional, and inter-medial facets of disability studies that identify and questions the notion of healthiness as a product of the dynamics between political, institutional, medical, and cultural entities.