"Arise! Ye Who Refuse to be Bond Slaves:" Paul Robeson, "The Black King of Songs, " and China

Professor Gao Yunxiang, History, Ryerson University

This lecture is adapted from a chapter in Gao Yunxiang’s new book Arise, Africa! Roar, China! Black and Chinese Citizens of the World in the Twentieth Century (UNC Press, December 2021). In this lecture, Gao unpacks the dynamic yet scarcely noted relations between Paul Robeson (1898-1976), the world famous African American singer, actor, athlete, lawyer, and political activist, and China throughout most of the twentieth century.

Sponsored by the East Asia Program, EAP Graduate Student Steering Committee, The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, and the Global Racial Justice initiative.

Seymour Lecture Focuses on Japan’s Olympic History

ITHACA, NY: This summer, Japan hosted the Olympics for the first time since 1964; before that, the country was awarded the 1940 Olympics and intended to use them to promote a jingoistic national identity, until it had to forfeit the games as a result of war with China. Historian Ken Ruoff will discuss the Japan that was on display in 1940 and 1964 at this year’s Harold Seymour Lecture in Sports History. The talk, “The 1940 and 1964 Tokyo Olympics and Japan’s National Identity” is hosted by Cornell’s Department of History and will be held at 2:30 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 15, in the Guerlac Room in the A.D. White House on Cornell’s campus.

The event is free and open to the public. Campus visitors and members of the public must adhere to Cornell’s public health requirements for events, which include wearing masks while indoors and providing proof of vaccination or a recent negative COVID-19 test.

“Engaging, knowledgeable, and an insightful historian on post-World War II Japan, Ken Ruoff will explore the way Japan tried to use its role in the 1964 Olympics to showcase ‘New Japan,’” says Kristin Roebuck, assistant professor of history in the College of Arts & Sciences. “Ruoff will examine how stubborn transwar continuities were present at the 1964 Olympics and examine continuities traced back to Japan’s forfeiture of hosting the 1940 Tokyo Olympics in the context of war with China.”

Ruoff is a professor in the modern history of Japan and director of the Center for Japanese Studies at Portland State University. His publications include “Japan’s Imperial House in the Postwar Era, 1945-2019,” and “Imperial Japan at Its Zenith: The Wartime Celebration of the Empire’s 2600th Anniversary Celebration.”

The Harold Seymour Lecture in Sports History is presented annually by the Department of History and brings distinguished historians to Cornell each year. Harold Seymour was one of the first baseball historians in the country, known for his three-volume book detailing the development of the sport from an amateur pastime into a professional sport.

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IXCANUL (“volcano” in the Kaqchikel language, English Subtitles)

Time: 6-8 PM | Place: G08 Uris Hall

This year’s LACS Film Series will screen movies from all over the region, highlighting the program’s recent focus on the Caribbean. During the Fall semester we’ll watch and discuss movies from North America (Mexico), Central America (Guatemala), and the Caribbean (Haiti & Dominican Republic). In the Spring semester, the series will “go South” with films from South American countries, and once again from the Caribbean.

Feel free to join any of the screening sessions + discussions without previous RSVP. Upcoming dates are October 21 and November 18 (always at 6pm). Further details will be shared before each session.

Looking forward to seeing you all!

The LACS Film Committee

Ixcanul Description: Maria, a 17 year old Mayan woman, lives on the slopes of an active volcano in Guatemala. An arranged marriage awaits her. Although Maria dreams of seeing 'the city', her status as an indigenous woman does not allow her to go out into that 'modern world'. Later, during a pregnancy complication, this modern world will save her life, but at what price. The brilliant debut by Guatemalan filmmaker Jayro Bustamante is a mesmerizing fusion of fact and fable, a dreamlike depiction of the daily lives of Kaqchikel speaking Mayans on a coffee plantation at the base of an active volcano. Immersing us in its characters' customs and beliefs, IXCANUL chronicles with unblinking realism, a disappearing tradition and a disappearing people.

CEAS welcomes author Glynne Walley to talk about his book Eight Dogs, or Hakkenden: Part One—An Ill-Considered Jest, a translation of Kyokutei Bakin's Nansō Satomi hakkenden. This multigenerational samurai saga was one of the most popular and influential Japanese books of the nineteenth century and has been adapted many times into film, television, fiction, and comics. Part One tells the story of Princess Fuse of the Satomi clan, whose tragic and heroic sacrifice leads to the creation of the Eight Dog Warriors.

Glynne Walley is an Associate Professor of Japanese Literature at the University of Oregon. His research interests involve popular literature and how it negotiates the requirements of industry and genre, the demands of a mass audience, and the aspirational pull of “serious” literature. His main focus is popular fiction of the late Tokugawa period, particularly Hakkenden. He is also the author of Good Dogs: Edification, Entertainment and Kyokutei Bakin's Nansō Satomi hakkenden (CEAS, 2017).

Housed in the East Asia Program, CEAS is an internationally known, award-winning scholarly press. CEAS publishes on subjects relative to the cultures of East Asia, covering topics in history, culture, and society, and translations of literary works.

Since its inception in 1973 as a venue for publishing papers that were submitted to the East Asia Program, the Series has grown into its current status as a publisher with a reputation for quality and specialized academic titles. More than 200 volumes have been published to date, with hundreds of titles in print and dozens of titles available digitally for free through the Cornell University Library.

Contact

For all publication matters, please contact the managing editor at ceas@cornell.edu.

Many scholars and practitioners do not necessarily know that the United States occupied Haiti for nineteen years, between 1915 and 1934. It is also not common knowledge that the monies taken from the National Bank of Haiti helped to boost the U.S. economy in the context of the great depression. With the recent assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse followed by the powerful earthquake of August 14, 2021, Haiti has yet again been in the spotlight of mainstream media, and is recurrently labelled as the “poorest country of the Western Hemisphere,” a label that not only ignores the root causes of Haiti’s contemporary issues, but also completely ignores the country’s rich history and resources. Contrary to the general scholarship that has reaffirmed neocolonial tropes about Haiti, Professor Saint Paul will unpack the myth that Haiti is the poorest country, and will explain how U.S. economic interests have driven U.S. political interventions in Haiti, from 1915 to now. The overall goal of the lecture is to raise awareness about the fact that the Caribbean country has been impoverished by powerful transnational social forces, highly influenced by the United States of America. The discussion will also explore the question of whether or not the United States has a moral responsibility in Haiti’s current state of affairs.

Virtual Event via Zoom, please register through the following link: https://cornell.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Py9gTMsFSta3oHkkmEQqyQ

Just after the turn of the new millennium, in 2003, the newly created state of Uttarakhand in India’s central Himalayas declared its ambition to become fully organic in all aspects of agricultural production. But what does it mean to become organic in a region where many people claim agriculture has always been “organic by default”? Tracing the social and bureaucratic life of organic quality as it is produced in Uttarakhand, this talk decenters commonly held understandings that hold up organic as a property of land and its produce. I show instead how organic may be more fully understood as a quality that is historically and socially produced and assembled within relationships forged between farmers, state authorities, private corporations, and new agrarian intermediaries, and that affirms, even as it seeks to rework, enduring distinctions between nature and agriculture in India.

Shaila Seshia Galvin is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the Graduate Institute of International Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. She conducts research at the intersection of environmental, political, and economic anthropology. Her recently published book, Becoming Organic: Nature and Agriculture in the Indian Himalaya (Yale University Press, 2021), emerges from long-term research interests in processes of agrarian change. Her upcoming research will examine intersections of agriculture and bioeconomies, as well as the proliferation of audit technologies and accounting methodologies as tools of environmental management and governance through a new project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, “Accounting for Nature: Agriculture and Mitigation in the Era of Global Climate Change.” Her work has been published in American Ethnologist, Annual Review of Anthropology, Journal of Asian Studies, and World Development, among others.

This event is co-sponsored by the Departments of Anthropology and Global Development.

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.