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Einaudi Center for International Studies

The Country and the City Graduate Conference

March 21, 2025

9:00 am

Kahin Center

Why do we see the country and the city as intrinsically different spaces and ways of being? Almost 50 years after Raymond Williams (1973) argued that this contrast is “one of the major forms in which we become conscious of a central part of our experience and of the crises of our society,” we continue to see agrarian economies and life as relics of an idyllic past, dissolving at the hands of the forward-marching cities. Against perspectives that saw the development of capitalism as an urban/industrial set of forces slowly gnawing away at rural/agrarian harmonious and simple living, Williams saw industrial capitalism as intrinsically connected to feudalism and agrarian capitalism, the urban to the rural. Rather than reflecting a historical reality, he argued that this spatial and ideological binary was constructed in direct response to the growth of capitalism and imperialism.

Today, more than half of the world’s population lives in urban areas—but agrarian livelihoods and lives are not merely withering away. The country-versus-city binary continues to govern our efforts to find solutions to the grave crises of our times. Contemporary solutions, such as agroecology as an antidote to industrial agriculture or green energy as a foil to fossil fuels, invoke the return to a pristine, sustainable past.

This conference will showcase graduate student papers that explore how the country and city constitute each other and investigate how capital, labor, imaginaries, and sentiments flow between the two.

10-11:30 am - Constructing Nature

Presentations by: Michael Cary, Jessie Mayall, Suraj Kushwaha and Finn Domingo

Discussant: Nataya Friedan

Constructions of nature, Williams reminds us, often contain veiled arguments about people, societies and social relations. This panel asks what kinds of social arguments are embedded in ideas of environmental instability and what kinds of politics emerge from them. We begin in England, where romanticized understandings of ‘the countryside’ underlie contemporary visions for landscape ‘optimization’ for food production and carbon sequestration. We then move to the remote Siachen glacier, where representations of the world’s highest battlefield by the Indian Army mediate public consent for militarization through appeals to martyrdom and national pride. From there we move to the aftermath of wildfires in Los Angeles, where the financial mechanisms and socio-economic effects of homeowners insurance are exacerbating an already unaffordable housing market. Finally, we turn to Paraguay, where the infrastructures of defense from destructive floods—and the politics of blame for when they happen—shape the relationship between an expanding city and neglected countryside.

12:30 -2pm - Morality of Improvement

Presentations by: Yui Sasajima, Maria Paula Espejo and Allen Huang

Discussant: Paul Kohlbry

These four papers examine the construction of rural spaces and urban fringes, paying attention to the flexible ideas of home that often lie behind the creation of certain spaces as desirable or ideal. At the heart of this question is the issue of improvement, which Raymond Williams points us to as a driver behind the subjection of tenants and the landless.Drawing on varying methodologies, these papers examine how rural and urban spaces are bridged—or thought to be bridged—through social reproduction, how home is made in new spaces, and who benefits from the drive to “improve.”

2:15-3:45pm - Structures of Feeling

Presentations by: Liam Greenwell, Georgia Koumantaros , Andrew Colpitts and Grace Myers

Discussant: Katharine Lindquist

Raymond Williams invites us to investigate the dialogic relationship between the rural and urban through the unspoken, shared, and historically contingent “structures of feeling” that emerge from cultural texts. This panel examines Williams’s contribution in relation to the moral, symbolic, representational, and material assemblages by which the rural is imagined. In doing so, we ask how the country and the city become sites of imagined dystopia and utopia alike by which people reimagine life in generative ways. These papers track imagined promises of the countryside—from a site for family values, national becoming, future imagination, and self-actualization—in contexts from rural evangelicalism in New York, queer reckonings with both limitation and thriving, folklore and placemaking in coal country, and the contradictions of village life in Greece. The unclear lines between utopia and dystopia trouble the position of the figures involved and promise—or threaten?—collective self-fashioning.

Additional Information

Program

Einaudi Center for International Studies

Latin American and Caribbean Studies

Institute for European Studies

South Asia Program

Artist’s Visit: Wang Tiande

April 10, 2025

4:00 pm

Johnson Museum of Art

This artist’s talk with Wang Tiande, the 2025 Wong Chai Lok Calligraphy Fellow at Cornell, is presented in conjunction with an installation of his work in the Johnson Museum of Art’s fifth-floor Rockwell Gallery (on view April 8–July 20).

From 4:00–4:30PM, the artist will be in the Rockwell Gallery to connect with visitors about his art. The talk will begin at 5:15PM in the Frank and Margaret Robinson Lecture Hall. The talk will also be available to live stream.

Celebrated for his revolutionary takes on traditional Chinese art both in China and abroad, Wang Tiande is best known for his burned landscapes, consisting of a painted underlayer and an overlayer burned with cigarettes or incense sticks. More recently, he has incorporated landscape rubbings of famous ancient steles from his own collection. In their fusion of the fleeting and the timeless, Wang Tiande’s works meditate on creation and destruction. They are both elegies to the past and celebrations of its present persistence. A reception will follow the talk.

Click here to join the webinar.

This event is cosponsored by the Johnson Museum, the East Asia Program, and the Wong Chai Lok Calligraphy Fund.

Additional Information

Program

East Asia Program

Einaudi Center for International Studies

How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies

March 29, 2025

8:30 pm

Cornell Cinema

A film screening by Cornell Cinema.

M, a university dropout low on money and luck, volunteers to take care of his terminally ill grandmother, in the hope of pocketing an inheritance. However, winning Grandma's favor is no easy feat. She proves to be a tough nut to crack—demanding, exacting, and exceedingly difficult to please. To add to the drama, he's not the only one gunning for the inheritance. M soon finds himself embroiled in a gripping competition, where he must go to great lengths to become the apple of Grandma's eye before time runs out, all in pursuit of a life-changing, multimillion-dollar inheritance.

Directed by Thai filmmaker Pat Boonnitipat, How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies offers a candid and comedic take on life, love, and family affairs.

Cosponsored by the Southeast Asia Program at the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. Special thanks to Fulbright visiting researcher Vince Ha.

Part of Cornell Cinema's "Worth a Watch" series. Courtesy of Well Go USA Entertainment. In Thai with English subtitles.

Additional Information

Program

Einaudi Center for International Studies

Southeast Asia Program

Wax Print

March 18, 2025

6:00 pm

Willard Straight Theatre

1 Fabric, 4 Continents, 200 Years of History

Wax Print (2018) traces the vast and multi-stranded global history of a fabric that has become an iconic symbol of Africa worldwide. The documentary follows British-born filmmaker and fashion designer Aiwan Obinyan on beautiful, transnational two-year journey, in search of the untold story of how wax print fabric came to symbolize a continent, its people, and their struggle for freedom.

Each wax print has a pattern, identity, and origin story embodied in the cloth. Obinyan traces how the fabric’s bright bold patterns and colors have been transformed by colonial encounters and become a significant part of the heritage of the African diaspora. The film also details an Indonesian, English, and Dutch history of the fabric, while bringing forth issues of fast fashion and mass-produced wax print copies.

The screening is presented in conjunction with the exhibition “Weaving Threads of Belonging: Cloth, Identity and Political Change in Africa and its Diasporas,” now on view in the Rachel Hope Doran ’19 & CF+TC Display Vitrines, Terrace Level at the Human Ecology Building.

The exhibit is created by students who were enrolled in HIST 2452/6452 – Dress, Cloth and Identity in Africa and the Diaspora with Professor Judith Byfield and is presented by the Cornell Fashion + Textile Collection (CF+TC). Both the course and the exhibit provide a different lens through which to explore and encounter African societies, their histories and dress cultures.

Free admission! Sponsored by the Cornell Fashion + Textile Collection, the Cornell Public History Initiative, the Department of History, and the Africana Studies and Research Center.

Part of our "Campus Collaborations" series. Courtesy of Documentary Educational Resources.

Additional Information

Program

Einaudi Center for International Studies

Sweet Poetry

April 9, 2025

5:30 pm

Klarman Hall Atrium

Any poem, any language! The Language Resource Center celebrates National Poetry Month. Sweet Poetry is an evening event in April named for enjoying tasty treats while sharing poems in different languages.

Join us on Wednesday, April 9, 2025 at 5:30 pm in the Klarman Hall Atrium. During the event, Cornell community members are invited to watch live poetry recitations in multiple languages. The event booklet, available digitally, includes transcriptions of each poem along with approximate English translations.

We look forward to an amazing lineup of poetry readings/signings this April and are excited to celebrate National Poetry Month together!

The event is co-sponsored by the Department of Asian Studies, the Department of Linguistics, and the Department of Romance Studies.

If you are interested in reading or signing a poem at the event, reach out to LRC Engagement and Outreach Coordinator, Ashley Griffith

Additional Information

Program

Einaudi Center for International Studies

Dow Tumbles 650 Points as Trump Confirms Tariffs on Mexico and Canada will Start Tuesday

Stack of shipping containers at port for international trade
March 3, 2025

Gustavo Flores-Macias, LACS

Gustavo Flores-Macias, professor of government, says “Due to the uncertainty surrounding the tariffs, the stock market has erased the gains from the ‘Trump bump’ following the presidential election and the expected upward pressure on prices is giving investors pause.”

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