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Zar, a constellation of belief and therapeutic response to spirit winds, has long been considered a ritual trace attesting to the movement of African slavery in the Indian Ocean world. This talk considers representations of the spirit healing ritual zar in Iranian ethnographic filmmaking in the 1960s and 70s. In attending to the abstraction of zar as it travels across one Iranian filmmaker’s oeuvre, I interrogate the model of historicity opened up by Indian Ocean slavery’s enigmatic archival legacy.

Parisa Vaziri is an assistant professor of Comparative Literature and Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University. Her research explores the legacies of Indian Ocean slavery from an interdisciplinary perspective. Her book project, Racial Blackness and Indian Ocean Slavery: Iran’s Media Archive, is forthcoming from the University of Minnesota Press and explores Iranian cinema as a site of historical transmission for the legacy of slavery in Iran.

This event is presented in part of CO+POS' Black History Month programming.

In this webcast, an interdisciplinary group of Cornell University experts will discuss how the concept of invasion characterizes the movements of humans, plants, and animals as threatening. They’ll dive into the range of work that address "invasive species," exploring how it aligns with or diverges from human-centered notions of invasion. In discussing this fraught concept, this panel of scholars in anthropology, ecology, evolutionary biology, and geography will also address what research that examines or problematizes “invasion” reveals about our understanding of borders and mobility.

This event is part of our Migrations series, sponsored by Cornell’s Migrations initiative.

Speakers:

Anurag Agrawal: James A. Perkins Professor, Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University

Christopher Dunn: E.N. Wilds Director and Adjunct Associate Professor, Cornell Botanic Gardens and Horticulture Section, School of Integrative Plant Science

David Lodge: Francis J. Disalvo Director, Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability

Natasha Raheja: Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Cornell University

Wendy Wolford: Vice Provost for International Affairs; Robert A. and Ruth E. Polson Professor of Global Development, Cornell CALS

Polson Institute for Global Development Seminar
A conversation with Ching Kwan Lee, UCLA

Professor Ching Kwan Lee explores the making of 'Global China' as an economic, cultural, and political phenomenon in this conversation with Jenny Goldstein (assistant professor of global development at Cornell) and Eli Friedman (associate professor and chair of international & comparative labor at Cornell)

Ching Kwan Lee is a Professor of Sociology at UCLA and author of three award-winning monographs on China: Gender and the South China Miracle: Two Worlds of Factory Women (1998); Against the Law: Labor Protests in China’s Rustbelt and Sunbelt (2007); and The Specter of Global China: Politics, Labor, and Foreign Investment in Africa (2017). Her most recent co-edited volumes include Take Back Our Future: an Eventful Sociology of the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement (Cornell University Press, 2019); and The Social Question in the 21st Century: A Global View (University of California Press, 2019).

Moderators:

Jenny Goldstein is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Global Development at Cornell University and a core faculty member of Cornell's Southeast Asian Studies Program. She works across the areas of political ecology, critical development studies, and human geography. She is co-editor of the forthcoming volume The Nature of Data: Infrastructures, Environments, Politics (Nebraska, 2022).Eli Friedman is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Comparative and International Labor at Cornell University. He is the author of Insurgency Trap: Labor Politics in Postsocialist China (Cornell 2014); and The Urbanization of People: The Politics of Development, Labor Markets, and Schooling in the Chinese City (Columbia, forthcoming Spring 2022).

The Robert A. and Ruth E. Polson Institute for Global Development supports theoretical and applied social science research. We fund projects and working groups that address issues ranging from economic inequality to discursive politics, contributing to Cornell’s leadership in global development.

This is a hybrid event. Registration information is below.

Professor Amy Rutenberg will discuss the idea that debates over U.S. manpower policy -because they rest on questions of personal liberty, collective responsibility, and competing visions of national security – end up substituting for much larger debates over the meaning of “America.” In this way, policy proposals end up acting as a cipher. The same basic program idea symbolizes very different things depending on the lens through which individuals decode it. This seminar will use debates over universal military training and selective service in the twentieth century as case studies.

About the speaker

Amy J. Rutenberg is an Associate Professor of History at Iowa State University. Her works focus on the intersection of war, gender, militarization, and American society in the second half of the twentieth century. Cornell University Press published her first book, Rough Draft: Cold War Military Manpower Policy and the Origins of Vietnam-Era Draft Resistance, in 2019, and she is working on a book tentatively titled In the Service of Peace: Peace Activism and Military Service in Post-Vietnam War America.

This seminar is part of the spring seminar series with the Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies (PACS).

Cosponsored by the American Studies Program.

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In accordance with university event guidance, all campus visitors who are 12 years old or older must also present a photo ID, as well as proof of vaccination for COVID-19 or results of a recent negative COVID-19 test. If you are not currently participating in the Cornell campus vaccination/testing program, please bring proof of vaccination or the results of a recent negative test.

Issues in African Development Seminar Series examines critical concerns in contemporary Africa using a different theme each semester. The seminars provide a forum for participants to explore alternative perspectives and exchange ideas. They are also a focal activity for students and faculty interested in African development. In addition, prepares students for higher level courses on African economic, social and political development. The presentations are designed for students who are interested in development, Africa’s place in global studies, want to know about the peoples, cultures and societies that call Africa home, and explore development theories and alternate viewpoints on development

Speaker's bio here

Registration link

Guest Speaker:

Fatema Sumar, Vice President of Compact Operations, Millennium

Leveraging her expertise in international development, foreign policy, diplomacy, and advocacy, Fatema Z. Sumarleads efforts to fight poverty by transforming global systems in reaching vulnerable populations. As Vice President of Compact Operations at the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), Ms. Sumar oversees all compacts which are MCC’s signature grant investment vehicle to reduce poverty through economic growth. In this role, she manages all of MCC’s technical and regional divisions working on infrastructure, the environment and climate change, the private sector, gender and social inclusion, human and community development, land and agriculture, procurement, financial management, strategic partnerships, and contracts and grant management globally.

She previously served as MCC’s Deputy Vice President for Europe, Asia, the Pacific, and Latin America whereshe managed all MCC compacts in these regions. Ms. Sumar returned to MCC after working in civil society as the Vice President of Global Programs at Oxfam America where she oversaw regional development and humanitarian response to fight the injustice of poverty. Her work contributed to initiatives on gender justice, climate justice, local humanitarian leadership, strategic monitoring and evaluation, digital rights, and grant management systems.

Ms. Sumar has a distinguished career in the U.S. government in both executive and legislative branches. She previously served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asia at the U.S. Department of State where she led U.S. efforts to expand regional economic and energy connectivity and as a Presidential Management Fellow (PMF). In Congress, she was a Senior Professional Staff Member on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee focused on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the broader region.

Ms. Sumar sits on Advisory Boards for Princeton, Cornell, and Indiana universities. Her work has been published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, The New Republic, The Hill, and other outlets. She is a frequent guest speaker and has testified before the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate. Ms. Sumar graduated with a Master of Public Affairs from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs, where she received the prestigious Stokes Award, and a Bachelor of Arts in Government from Cornell University. She studied abroad at the AmericanUniversity in Cairo.