Ithaca Premiere. 2021 > Chad > Directed by Mahamat-Saleh Haroun
With Achouackh Abakar, Rihane Khalil Alio
Amina, a single mother and practicing Muslim, lives with her 15-year-old daughter, Maria. When Amina learns Maria is pregnant and wants to abort the child, they face an impossible situation in a country where abortion is legally and morally condemned. "A blistering attack on patriarchy and a warm reaffirmation of 'the sacred bonds' (the meaning of the film's title) among women, it's a bracing work... etched in fully felt performances and beautifully hued compositions." (Justin Chang, LA Times) Subtitled. More at mubi.com/films/lingui
1 hr 27 min

Over two days, scholars, writers, practitioners, activists, and students across institutions are coming together virtually to explores the relationship between borders, captivity, and memory, and how it shapes the racialization of migration and the construction of national identity.

The first day of the symposium is March 18, 2022 and the second day is April 8, 2022.

Day 2 Schedule:

Welcome and Roundtable 1: Translation, Testimony, and Storytelling across Borders, 9:45–11:30 a.m. (ET)

Keynote: Language, Identity, and Representation in Transnational Italy, 12–1:30 p.m. (ET)

Speakers: Amara Lakhous and Ubah Cristina Ali FarahDiscussants: Ron Kubati and Loredana PolezziStudent Reflection Session, 1:30–2:15 p.m. (ET)

Open to undergraduate and graduate students at any institution

Roundtable 2: Readings and Discussion to Celebrate the Launch of Contemporary Italian Diversity in Critical and Fictional Narratives, 2:45–4:15 p.m. (ET)

This symposium is organized through the Central New York Humanities Corridor (LLC35), with co-sponsorship from Montclair State University Inserra Chair in Italian and Italian American Studies, the AAIS Critical Race Studies Caucus, Cornell's Migrations initiative, the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies and its Institute for European Studies, the Cornell Department of Romance Studies, the University of Rochester's Humanities Center, and the Department of Humanities in the Eastman School of Music.

Over two days, scholars, writers, practitioners, activists, and students across institutions are coming together virtually to explores the relationship between borders, captivity, and memory, and how it shapes the racialization of migration and the construction of national identity.

The first day of the symposium is March 18, 2022 and the second day is April 8, 2022.

Day 1 Schedule:

Welcome and Roundtable 1 Cultural, Legal, and Sociological Perspectives on Racial Justice in Italy and the Mediterranean, 9:45–11:30 a.m. (ET)

Keynote: Racial Justice and the Black Mediterranean, 12–1:30 p.m. (ET)

Speakers: Camilla Hawthorne and Angelica PesariniDiscussants: Simone Brioni and Teresa FioreStudent Reflection Session, 1:30–2:15 p.m. (ET)

Open to undergraduate and graduate students at any institution

Facilitators: Simone Brioni and Teresa FioreRoundtable 2: “Italian Others”: Histories of Racialized Migration and Diaspora between the Nineteenth Century and the Present, 2:45–4:15 p.m. (ET)

This symposium is organized through the Central New York Humanities Corridor (LLC35), with co-sponsorship from Montclair State University Inserra Chair in Italian and Italian American Studies, the AAIS Critical Race Studies Caucus, Cornell's Migrations initiative, the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies and its Institute for European Studies, the Cornell Department of Romance Studies, the University of Rochester's Humanities Center, and the Department of Humanities in the Eastman School of Music.

By Bharat Patankar

Bharat Patankar is an intellectual-activist based in India. A recent New York Times obituary of his life-partner Gail Omvedt, noted that Patankar has led Shramik Mukti Dal (toilers' liberation league), "an organization credited with launching some of the largest organized mass movements against injustices experienced by workers in rural India." He comes from an intergenerational heritage which links the nineteenth-century visions of Savitribai Phule and Karl Marx; with those of the 1940s Prati Sarkar parallel government as well as B.R. Ambedkar; to the new social movements facing the 1970s Emergency; to the contentions of 21st-century India. As people today face a regime of intensified communal, brahmanist and patriarchal exploitation — Patankar works to build alternatives at the intersection of economic, political as well as cultural fronts. Patankar will reflect on his decades leading farmer-labor movements in land and water struggles, over development and climate concerns—while forging dreams of a radically transformed economy and ecology. And he will speak to the theory and practice of leftist and liberation work—forging solidarity across caste, gender, religion and class struggles, towards emancipation for all.

Bharat Patankar is an activist-intellectual based in India. Patankar has led mass-based social movements for decades, particularly through Shramik Mukti Dal (toilers' liberation league). SMD has organized farmers and laborers across Maharashtra, India’s second-most populous state with a population of over one-hundred million. He is one of the architects of a prevailing framework for equitable water distribution. He has organized drought-affected villages and dam-displaced communities, towards alternative development models with respect to dams and irrigation. These movements link working-class livelihood needs with feminist, anticommunal and anticaste (Dalit-Bahujan-Adivasi) solidarity commitments. Patankar's articles have appeared in journals such as Race & Class, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, Critical Asian Studies, and Economic & Political Weekly. His books include For Human Liberation, The Songs of Tukoba (with Gail Omvedt), and Sakhi: Poems.

By Cheran

In this lecture and reading, Cheran will reflect on the important but ambiguous relationship with the sea from both personal and communal perspectives. Drawing on and reading from his various poems about the sea and other water bodies, he will chart an alternative imagination for Tamil identities.

Dr. R. Cheran is Tamil Canadian academic, poet, playwright and journalist. He is a professor at the University of Windsor in Canada. He has authored over fifteen books in Tamil, and his work has been translated into twenty languages. Several volumes of his work have been published in English translation, including The Second Sunrise (Translated by Lakshmi Holmstrom, 2010), In a Time of Burning (Translated by Lakshmi Holmstrom and Sascha Ebeling, 2013) and You Cannot Turn Away (Translated by Chelva Kanaganayakam, 2011). His poems in English translation have also been published in numerous literary magazines, such as Bomb (New York), Modern Poetry in Translation, Many Mountains Moving, Exiled Ink, Mantra Review, and Talisman. His poems have been included in several anthologies, including Singing in the Dark: An Anthology of Lockdown Poems (2020), Many Roads Through Paradise: Sri Lankan Literature (edited by Shyam Selvadurai, 2014), and In Our Translated World: Global Tamil Poetry (edited by Chelva Kanaganayakam, 2014).

Cheran was the recipient of the International Poetry Award from ONV Kurup Foundation in Dubai in 2017. He has performed is poetry at various International Writers’ festivals in the United Kingdom, Singapore, the US, Indonesia, India, Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada, Ramallah, West Bank, Dubai and Mexico. His plays in English language have been produced and performed in Toronto, Canada, New York, Chicago and New Jersey in the US. Singapore’s modern dance group Chowk has produced and performed a dance play based on his poems titled “The Second Sunrise”. The Second Sunrise was performed at the Singapore International dance festival, and Washington’s Kennedy Centre for the Arts.

The Rabindranath Tagore Lecture Series in Modern Indian Literature is made possible by a gift from Cornell Professor Emeritus Narahari Umanath Prabhu and his wife, the late Sumi Prabhu. Inspired by Rabindranath Tagore’s expansive imagination, unbounded by geopolitical boundaries, the series has regularly featured prominent writers from across South Asia and its diasporas.

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.

Register here

Speaker bio details here

(photo by Justin Lane)

The Cornell Classical Chinese Colloquium (CCCC) is pleased to welcome Stephen Teiser, of Princeton University to lead our final CCCC text reading of the semester. HYBRID

He will present one or two Chinese Buddhist liturgical texts (zhaiwen 齋文) composed largely in parallel prose (pianliwen 駢儷文 or siliuwen 四六文)

The Cornell Classical Chinese Colloquium (CCCC) 古文品讀 is a reading group for scholars interested in premodern Sinographic (古文) text. The group typically meets monthly during the semester to explore a variety of classical Chinese texts and styles. Other premodern texts linked to classical Chinese in Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese have been explored. Presentations include works from the earliest times to the 20th century. Workshop sessions are led by local, national, and international scholars. No preparation is required, all texts will be distributed at the meeting.

The Cornell Classical Chinese Colloquium (CCCC) is pleased to welcome Tristan Brown, of MIT to lead our next CCCC text reading titled, "Fengshui in Texts from Qing China."

The Cornell Classical Chinese Colloquium (CCCC) 古文品讀 is a reading group for scholars interested in premodern Sinographic (古文) text. The group typically meets monthly during the semester to explore a variety of classical Chinese texts and styles. Other premodern texts linked to classical Chinese in Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese have been explored. Presentations include works from the earliest times to the 20th century. Workshop sessions are led by local, national, and international scholars. No preparation is required, all texts will be distributed at the meeting.

CCCI welcomes Tani Barlow, the George and Nancy Rupp Professor of Humanities and Professor of History at Rice University to speak on, "Instinct and Society."

When Li Zehou burst onto the scene during the 1980s ‘culture fever’ he dragged back in altered form a much earlier foundational debate over evolution and instinct theory launched in the new social theory and human science movement during the May Fourth era. Barlow's general research question now is how society got ontologized a century ago. How did proof of “society,” a materialized model, get so embedded in our explanatory frameworks that we have trouble thinking outside of it, even though we regularly confront questions it cannot resolve.

The Contemporary China Initiative this spring is directed by Arnika Fuhrmann, Associate Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at Cornell University and the author of Ghostly Desires: Queer Sexuality and Vernacular Buddhism in Contemporary Thai Cinema.

This semester's CCCI lecture series is connected to Asian 6623 being taught by Professor Fuhrmann called 'The City.'

CCCI spring 2022 is co-sponsored by the East Asia Program, the Department of History, Asian Studies, the Cornell Society for the Humanities, Comparative Literature, and the Migrations Initiative.