Speaker: Quan Gan, Lecturer of History, Rice University

Title: Invest the Gods, Praise the Lord: Royal Speeches on Temple Steles in Wuyue

Abstract: Throughout his political career, Qian Liu 錢鏐 (d. 932 CE) repeatedly petitioned the emperors in the north to grant honorific titles to powerful figures—both living and deceased, human and divine—within Wuyue. In this colloquium, I will examine two temple inscriptions commissioned by Qian Liu to commemorate the imperial bestowal of honorific titles upon two local deities: Pang Yu 龐玉, the patron god of Yuezhou 越州 (908), and the Dragon God of Hangzhou 杭州 (916).
These two steles offer valuable insight into practices of commemoration and political communication in post-Tang China. Both inscriptions are highly stylized, composed in the parallel prose form (pianwen 駢文), also known as “Four-Six Prose.” Written in Qian Liu’s first-person voice, they celebrate the political achievements of the ruler of Wuyue while foregrounding his ritual relationship with the northern emperor. Most intriguingly, both the textual content and the material form of the steles emphasize this connection. The imperial edict authorizing the bestowal of titles is not only incorporated into the inscription’s text but also visually reproduced on the stone itself.
I welcome discussion on how best to preserve the distinct registers, literary conventions, and layered voices of such inscriptions in English translation.

About Cornell Classical Chinese Colloquium
The group 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 also been explored. Presentations include works from the earliest times to the 20th century. Workshop sessions are led by local, national, and international scholars. Participants with any level of classical Chinese experience are welcome to attend.
o At each session, a presenter guides the group in a reading of a classical Chinese text. Attendees discuss historical, literary, linguistic, and other aspects of the text, working together to resolve difficulties in comprehension and translation.
o No preparation is required; all texts will be distributed at the meeting.
o Refreshments will be served.

Possible Landscapes joins seven people in seven different regions of the Caribbean islands of Trinidad and Tobago in the course of their daily lives: Kevin, a fisherman on the east coast suffering the recent loss of one of his crew members at sea; four generations of the Josephs family in the steep hillsides of the northern range; Captain ‘Spaceman’ Philips and his glass-bottomed boat in Tobago from which he has witnessed the decline of the coral reefs; Crystal, a trade unionist active in supporting workers who lost their jobs when a major oil refinery was closed; Romulas, known as the “last sugar cane farmer” in the central plains and his Venezuelan workers; Stephanie a nurse who worked in the oil fields in the south starting just after World War II; Tony, originally from Jamaica, a climate change analyst, agriculturalist and rabbit farmer in St Joseph.

A collaboration between a documentary filmmaker, Kannan Arunasalam, and two professors, Tao DuFour (Architecture) a spatial theorist and Natalie Melas (Comparative Literature) a postcolonial comparatist and student of Caribbean thought, Possible Landscapes is the outcome of the team research project, “Possible Landscapes: Documenting Environmental Experience in Trinidad and Tobago,” funded through a grant from Cornell University’s Migrations: A Global Grand Challenge and the Mellon Just Futures Initiative.

Filmmaker Kannan Arunasalam and producers Natalie Melas (Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Cornell) and Tao DuFour (assistant professor of architecture) will join for a conversation after the screening.

Free admission! Reserve your free ticket through Cornell Cinema. Sponsored by the Migrations Program with cosponsorship from the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program, both part of the Einaudi Center for International Studies.

East Asia Program Lecture Series presents “Invisible Anatomy: Meridians and Math in Chinese Medicine"

Speaker: Lan Li, Assistant Professor of The History of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University

Description:

This talk is based on Body Maps: Improvising Meridians and Nerves in Global Chinese Medicine, which reframes generic anatomical images by considering illustrations of invisible structures as maps. Body Maps offers a long global history of medicine through hand-drawn body maps and spans across the tenth to the twentieth centuries to re-think cultures of objectivity beyond normative geographies of science and medicine. In this talk, I focus on the graphic form of a tu 圖 as a historical category of technical images to understand how illustrations of lines guided diagnostic and therapeutic practice. Scholars often debated whether to discursively interpret these lines as meridians, channels, or tracts; practitioners often debated whether these lines merely visualized nerves to articulate needling and heating practices. Specifically, this talk offers a critical examination of a thirteenth-century image of jingluo 經絡, or meridians, and considers it within the epistemological frameworks of global East Asian medicine. Drawing on analytical approaches from science studies, visual culture, and medical humanities, it traces the aesthetic, conceptual, and political dimensions of these anatomical images across premodern, modern, and contemporary periods.

Speaker's Bio: Lan A. Li is an Assistant Professor in the Department of the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University. Li is a historian of the body and media producer, contributing to podcasts and exhibitions related to acupuncture, Buddhist medicine, and metaphors in science and medicine. Li’s first book, Body Maps: Improvising Meridians and Nerves in Global Chinese Medicine (JHU Press, 2025) considers the long history of graphically representing invisible anatomy.

"Advancing Second Language Proficiency and Intercultural Competence in Postsecondary Education"
LRC Signature Speaker
LeAnne Spino
Associate Professor of Spanish, Proficiency Coordinator, and Director of International Studies and Diplomacy, University of Rhode Island

This is a pivotal moment for language programs. Enrollments in languages other than English are plummeting across the United States. Also in flux is the landscape of higher education more generally. In this climate of uncertainty, language programs must be able to clearly and convincingly articulate their value. Yet how can we effectively make these arguments?

There are, of course, many possible strategies for demonstrating and communicating the value of language programs. In this talk, I will detail one possible approach, resulting from a deep realignment across six degree-granting language programs at the University of Rhode Island that sought to advance students' language proficiency and intercultural competence. We will explore what these constructs are, the extent to which they develop in postsecondary studies, and how they can be framed to university leadership, faculty, and students to successfully communicate at least part of the value of a postsecondary language education.

Bio: Dr. Spino (Spino-Seijas) received her Ph.D. from Michigan State University in Second Language Studies. She is currently an Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Rhode Island and the Proficiency Coordinator for the Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures, where she spearheads the Department’s Proficiency Initiative. This initiative seeks to increase students' language proficiency through faculty training, large-scale proficiency testing, and evidence-based curricular revamping. Dr. Spino is also the Director of the International Studies and Diplomacy program, a dual degree program in which students major in International Studies and a language, study abroad for at least a semester, and reach a high proficiency benchmark in the language they study before graduation.
Dr. Spino specializes in second language acquisition. Much of her research focuses on issues that impact language teaching directly. She is particularly interested in the development of second language proficiency and the sociopolitics of language acquisition and pedagogy, especially as it pertains to heritage language speakers of Spanish.

This event will be held in person in G25 Stimson and will also be streamed live over Zoom (registration required). Join us at the LRC or on Zoom.

The event is free and open to the public.

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program supports U.S. citizens to study, conduct research in any field, or teach English in more than 150 countries. The program is open to graduate students, recent graduates, and young professionals. Undergraduate students who wish to begin the program immediately after graduation are encouraged to start the process in their junior year. Recent graduates are welcome to apply through Cornell.

The Fulbright program at Cornell is administered by the Mario Einaudi Center for International studies. Applicants are supported through all stages of the application and are encouraged to start early by contacting fulbright@einaudi.cornell.edu.

Register for the virtual session.

Can’t attend? Contact fulbright@einaudi.cornell.edu.