Ming-sho Ho (Sociology, National Taiwan University)

Taiwan's vibrant democracy nowadays defied the geopolitical challenges imposed by a century of Japanese colonialism, cold-war anti-communist dictatorship, and China's irredentism. This lecture will analyze the island nation's pursuit of autonomy and democracy, with special attention to the role of student mobilization. "Student" was a category created in the colonial modernization, as the Japanese modernized the educational structure and expanded the youthful population receptive to political radicalism. After the flourishing of anti-colonial struggles in the 1920s, the postwar Chinese Nationalist regime encountered student mobilization in the 1947 February 28 Incident and the subsequent clandestine insurgency. The early-1970s witnessed the rise of the nationalistic Diaoyutai movement and its spillover to prodemocracy and social service streams. The lifting of martial law in 1987 gave a mighty impetus to the student movement, culminating in the 1990 Wild Lily Movement. After a long hibernation, the student movement made a comeback in the 2008 Wild Strawberry Movement and the 2014 Sunflower Movement, with the protest target shifting to China. His lecture will review the century-long student movement history and examine its changing ideologies, strategies, and impacts.

Faculty host: Eli Friedman (Sociology, Department of Comparative International Labor Relations, Cornell)
Co-sponsored by The Levinson China & Asia-Pacific Studies Program

The Cornell Contemporary China Initiative (CCCI) of the East Asia Program welcomes Simona Segre-Reinach (Fashion Studies, University of Bologna, Italy) as part of our semester-long theme of Fashion and Politics in Twentieth-Century China with faculty host, Peidong Sun (History, Cornell)

Some of the questions that guest speakers will investigate include: How do we define politics from the dimension of fashion? What was a politicized fashion? How did fashion reflect the power structure? How did fashion become a way of obedience and resistance? And how do we define and interpret the human condition in China under Mao's rule (1949-1976)? What was human resilience in the face of absolute power?

Simona Segre-Reinach's talk is titled, "Sino-Italian Encounters in Global Fashion: 20 Years of Sino-Italian Collaborations."

The talk focuses on the evolution of fashion relations between Italy and China in a unique period - from the late nineties of the 20th century to the second decade of the 21st century – which signals a change in the concept and the practices of Italian fashion on the one hand and the emerging of Chinese fashion withing a global setting on the other.

The CCCI lecture series aims to expose the broad campus community to issues and scholarship of contemporary China.

We thank our co-sponsors:

Asian American Pacific Studies Program | Asian Studies | College of Human Ecology | Cornell Society for the Humanities | Feminist, Gender & Sexuality StudiesDepartment of History | Department of International & Comparative Labor Relations | Department of History | The Levinson China & Asia-Pacific Studies Program

The Cornell Contemporary China Initiative (CCCI) of the East Asia Program welcomes Deborah Davis (Sociology, Yale University)
as part of our semester-long theme of Fashion and Politics in Twentieth-Century China with faculty host, Peidong Sun (History, Cornell)

Some of the questions that guest speakers will investigate include: How do we define politics from the dimension of fashion? What was a politicized fashion? How did fashion reflect the power structure? How did fashion become a way of obedience and resistance? And how do we define and interpret the human condition in China under Mao's rule (1949-1976)? What was human resilience in the face of absolute power?

Deborah Davis's talk is titled, "Sexual Revolutions and the Future of the Institution of Marriage."

Drawing on census data, documentaries, life histories, and a decade of fieldwork, the lecture considers the future of marriage and sexual intimacy in contemporary China where the one-child policy, massive migration out of villages, and multiplying connections to global youth cultures have transformed the legal, demographic, and cultural supports for marriage.

The CCCI lecture series aims to expose the broad campus community to issues and scholarship of contemporary China.

We thank our co-sponsors:

Asian American Pacific Studies Program | Asian Studies | College of Human Ecology | Cornell Society for the Humanities | Feminist, Gender & Sexuality StudiesDepartment of History | Department of International & Comparative Labor Relations | Department of History | The Levinson China & Asia-Pacific Studies Program

The Cornell Contemporary China Initiative (CCCI) of the East Asia Program welcomes Antonia Finnane (History, University of Melbourne) as part of our semester-long theme of Fashion and Politics in Twentieth-Century China with faculty host, Peidong Sun (History, Cornell)

Some of the questions that guest speakers will investigate include: How do we define politics from the dimension of fashion? What was a politicized fashion? How did fashion reflect the power structure? How did fashion become a way of obedience and resistance? And how do we define and interpret the human condition in China under Mao's rule (1949-1976)? What was human resilience in the face of absolute power?

Antonia Finnane's talk is titled, "Patterns for the People in Communist China."

When the People’s Republic of China was founded, new clothing protocols for state employees resulted in a general change in everyday dress. This was consistent with historical precedent: when the dynasty changed, the clothing was altered. But who made the new clothes and how were they made? Clothing in this period is often discussed in terms such as variety, agency, and consumption, contradicting assumptions of general conformity under communism; yet if we look at how clothes were made, we can see how conformity was instilled.

The CCCI lecture series aims to expose the broad campus community to issues and scholarship of contemporary China.

We thank our co-sponsors:

Asian American Studies Program | Asian Studies | College of Human Ecology | Cornell Society for the Humanities | Feminist, Gender & Sexuality Studies | Department of International & Comparative Labor Relations | Department of History | The Levinson China & Asia-Pacific Studies Program

Many contemporary theorists and practitioners of disobedience have questioned whether civility and nonviolence ought to be requisite components of legitimate dissent. While sharing their skepticism of overly narrow, prescriptive formulations of a moral or legal right to disobedience, Professor Karuna Mantena considers broader practices of civility and explores their purpose and function in terms of the political logic of nonviolent protest. She does so by way of a historical and conceptual analysis of why and how Gandhi introduced civility into the theory and practice of nonviolent disobedience. The emphasis on civility in disobedience marks a significant departure from Thoreau’s understanding, in which the term “civil” designated the object of resistance (namely, civil government or the state) and not its character.

Gandhi began to insist on civility in nonviolent protest as a remedy to the violence that accompanied his first attempts at mass satyagraha in India (1919-1922). He diagnosed this violence as stemming in part from the unmasterable character of political action. Civility as a form of self-discipline was devised to manage and mitigate action’s inherent hazards. The speaker will highlight two novel aspects of this formulation: the ways in which civility was to be formalized, performed, and dramatized in satyagraha and how such practices served to make protest more persuasive.

Please join us for this virtual conversation. Register here.

About the Speaker

Karuna Mantena is a Professor of Political Science at Columbia University and co-director of the International Conference for the Study of Political Thought (CSPT). She is the author of Alibis of Empire: Henry Maine and the Ends of Liberal Imperialism (2010), which analyzed the transformation of nineteenth-century British imperial ideology.

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Presented by the Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies. Co-sponsored by the Department of History and the Gender and Security Sector Lab.