The Pregnant Tree and the Goblin (2019, 115 minutes) by Kim Dongryung, Park Kyoungtae

In a shanty village located next to the US military base in Uijungbu, lives a former US military comfort woman named Park Insun. Living in the village for more than 40 years, Insun feels uneasy after the news announcement of the demolition plan of the military base.

One winter night, Insun discovers the death of her colleague and follows her silent funeral. She is soon spotted by the Death Messengers who came to investigate the wandering ghosts and take them to the afterlife. While the Death Messengers try to make up stories for the ghosts, Insun decides to make her own story to fight back her extinction.

Filmmakers Kim Dongryung and Park Kyoungtae will participate in a post-screening conversation with Shinjae Kim, film curator and critic.

Part of the series Power of Seeing 보는 이의 권력 hosted by the East Asia Program at the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.

About the Filmmakers

Kim Dongryung, born in 1977, majored in English literature and film making at KAFA & Paris 8. She started photography and then made shorts and documentaries on the daily lives of the US Military Camp Town since 2004.

Park Kyoungtae, born in 1975. After studying sociology and visual anthropology, he made documentaries on women and children of US military camp town in Korea since 2000. His debut documentary starred Park Insun, a former US comfort woman, and since then he collaborated with her in various films.

In Korean with English subtitles.

Film website: www.koreanfilm.or.kr/eng/films/index/filmsView.jsp?movieCd=20190665

We thank the following for their generous co-sponsorship:

The Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies

The Cornell Society for the Humanities

Is the University Still a Site of Critical Thinking: Critical Thinking in the Ruins is Panel Two of a 4-panel series which is part of Working in the Traces of Area Studies hosted by faculty emeriti Brett DeBary (Asian Studies, Cornell) and Naoki Sakai (Asian Studies, Cornell).

One legacy of the discourse of the West and the Rest can be found in the fetishized idiom “Western theory,” as if theory were a capacity exclusive only to European or Western humanity. Above all else, we have to acknowledge that at present we do not know who and what is indexed by the West; we are not certain of who the Westerners are or where the West and its polar opposite being the Rest can be mapped. What is at stake is what kind of critical and transformative capacity we designate by “theory.” What should we pursue? What do we mean by “theory,” seeking the general patterns in empirical and positive knowledge, attending to the operations of power in knowledge production, or a critical assessment of the disciplinary formation in knowledge production?

The panelists are:

Jon Solomon, Department of Languages, Lyon III University, Jean Moulin, France Junyoung Verónica Kim, Department of Hispanic Languages and Literatures, University of PittsburghAndrea Bachner, Comparative Literature, Cornell University is stepping in for Peter Osborne, School of Creative and Cultural Industries, Kingston School of Art, London; Director, Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy due to a sudden inability to attend.Discussant will be: Gavin Walker, Departments of History and East Asian Studies, McGill University, MontrealThis symposium is co-sponsored by the Department of Asian Studies.

Registration Link: https://cglink.me/2cm/r2042285

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 5/9, Ruth Aguilera, Northeastern University

Dr. Dolors Armenteras will present her analysis of the patterns and impacts of forest degradation in the Colombian Amazon for more than 20 years. Her presentation will share insights and updates from the remote sensing of forest dynamics and land use patterns following the 2016 peace process in Colombia.

About the Speaker

Dr. Dolors Armenteras is a geographer and biodiversity conservation expert. She is a biologist from the Universitat de Barcelona, holds an MSc in Environmental Forestry from the University of Wales, and a PhD in Geography from King’s College London, UK. Most of her scientific and research work has been developed over the last 20 years in Colombia.

She is currently a Professor of Landscape Ecology at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Before that, she worked in the environmental sector, where she developed the first integrated spatial geographic information system for monitoring Colombian ecosystems and biodiversity in the early 2000s and coordinated the first ecosystem services assessment undertaken in Colombia in 2005. Her experience and knowledge of tropical ecology include work on fire ecology, biodiversity conservation, deforestation, land use changes, and sustainability scenarios.

Co-Sponsors: Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, Department of Natural Resources, Einaudi Center