Part of the Ronald and Janette Gatty Lecture Series.

Sara Ann Swenson, Department of Religion, Dartmouth

Sara Ann Swenson researches contemporary Buddhism in Vietnam. Her current work examines rising trends of Buddhist volunteerism in Vietnam’s fastest growing urban area, Ho Chi Minh City. Drawing on twenty months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2015 and 2019, she explores how lay and monastic Buddhist charity workers coped with experiences of urban alienation by framing altruism as an intersubjective act that benefits all beings. Her scholarship shows how Buddhist practices fundamentally inform a shift toward grassroots social service programming in Vietnam amid increasing economic privatization. Swenson's research has been published in The Journal of Global Buddhism, The Journal of Vietnamese Studies, Political Theology, and the Journal of Theology & Sexuality. Her work has been funded through the Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship; Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA); and The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Dissertation Fellowship in Buddhist Studies, awarded through the American Council of Learned Societies. Swenson completed her Ph.D. in Religion from Syracuse University in 2021. She holds an M.Phil. in Religion (Syracuse University, 2016), a Certificate of Advanced Study in Women’s and Gender Studies (Syracuse University, 2015), an M.A. in Comparative Religion (Iliff School of Theology, 2012), and a B.A. in English (University of Minnesota Duluth, 2009)

For questions, please contact seapgatty@cornell.edu.

Gatty Lectures will be held in-person at the Kahin Center, with the option to attend virtually as well. To attend virtually, please register at

https://cornell.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIoduyuqDssGtVvvlSO4gwT3ujt5q….

Beverages will be served outside before the talk, and in accordance with current Cornell guidance we will be wearing masks indoors. Feel free to bring your own brownbag lunch and eat outside with us before the talk.

Part of the Ronald and Janette Gatty Lecture Series.

Joshua Plotnik, Department of Psychology, Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York

Joshua Plotnik, Ph.D. is a comparative psychologist who has studied elephants in Thailand since 2007. Recently, Dr. Plotnik has been working with students and colleagues to understand how research on animal behavior and cognition can be applied directly to the mitigation of human-wildlife conflict. He received his Ph.D. from Emory University, and was a Newton International Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Cambridge. He is now an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York in New York City (www.elephantlab.org). He is also the founder of Think Elephants International (www.thinkelephants.org), a U.S. non-profit charity focused on conservation education in the U.S. and Thailand. Dr. Plotnik is a member of the IUCN Human-Wildlife Conflict Task Force and the IUCN Asian Elephant Specialist Group.

Please note that this talk will not be held in person at the Kahin Center, and will take place on Zoom. Members of the SEAP community are welcome to come to the Kahin Center to watch the Zoom event together.

For questions, please contact seapgatty@cornell.edu.

To attend virtually, please register at https://cornell.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwsduypqDsvHtbE6HJ4O-V9UQk6c7….

Beverages will be served outside before the talk, and in accordance with current Cornell guidance we will be wearing masks indoors. Feel free to bring your own brownbag lunch and eat outside with us before the talk.

Part of the Ronald and Janette Gatty Lecture Series.

Thomas Pepinsky, Department of Government and Brooks School of Public Policy, Cornell University

Thomas Pepinsky is the Walter F. LaFeber Professor in the Department of Government and School of Public Policy at Cornell University and Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He specializes in comparative politics and international political economy, with a focus on emerging markets in Southeast Asia. Among other works, he is the author of “Context and Method in Southeast Asian Politics,” “Migrants, Minorities, and Populism in Southeast Asia,” “Colonial Migration and the Origins of Governance: Theory and Evidence from Java," and Piety and Public Opinion: Understanding Indonesian Islam (with Bill Liddle and Saiful Mujani). He regularly teaches the Southeast Asian Politics course at Cornell, as well as general courses on comparative politics and political economy, and he is currently working on issues relating to identity, politics, and political economy in comparative and international politics.

For questions, please contact seapgatty@cornell.edu.

Gatty Lectures will be held in-person at the Kahin Center, with the option to attend virtually as well. To attend virtually, please register at https://cornell.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAtcu-hrjIoHddMh2NaIfnh3pu2g-….

Beverages will be served outside before the talk, and in accordance with current Cornell guidance we will be wearing masks indoors. Feel free to bring your own brownbag lunch and eat outside with us before the talk.

The ill-fated American invasion in Afghanistan came to an abrupt end with the collapse of the Afghan government and the Taliban takeover of Kabul in mid-August. Images of the chaos that ensued as the U.S. and other NATO countries attempted to evacuate tens of thousands of people continue to play out on television screens around the world.

The collapse of the Afghan security forces in days and the withdrawal of European and American government personal left many Afghans vulnerable to the new regime’s policies and their future of the country in doubt. Much airtime has been devoted to analyzing this crisis in terms of American and European interests, yet we have learned little about how Afghans who have worked to rebuild their country’s institutions are faring, how they envision their future, and how the international community can help to secure a secure and prosperous future for all Afghans.

In this webinar, we ask two Afghan scholars to reflect on the state of their country, what they see taking place in the near and long terms, and possible ways to achieve a future they envision for their country.

Panelists:

Muska Dastageer is a political scientist specializing in peace and political theory. She is a lecturer at the American University of Afghanistan (AUAF) in Kabul, Afghanistan. Alongside her lecturing, she is also an Expert Advisor on the Atlantic Council’s Strategic Dialogues on Afghanistan.Up until December 2020 she also worked as a special anti-corruption advisor with the Joint Taskforce for Anti & Counter Corruption (JTACC). Prior to this she advised the USAID-funded Afghanistan's Measure for Accountability and Transparency (AMANAT) program and the Monitoring and Evaluation Committee, delivering several damning institutional assessments of ministries in Kabul in 2018 and 2019. She holds two MSc degrees from the University of Oxford and the University of Copenhagen. Her articles on the Afghan peace process and security in South Asia have been published by the Atlantic Council, The Diplomat and RÆSON and has participated in panels arranged by Brookings Institution and the Atlantic Council.

Haroun Rahimi obtained his B.A. in Law from Herat University, his LLM in Global Business Law from the University of Washington School of Law, and his Ph.D. from the University of Washington. Rahimi is Assistant Professor of Law at the American University of Afghanistan. Rahimi's research focuses on economic laws, institutional reform, and divergent conceptions of rule of law in the Muslim and modern thoughts. Rahimi's research has appeared in reputable local and international journals. Rahimi has also collaborated as an independent consultant with a number of research firms and policy think tanks conducting policy research on institutional development and good governance in the South Asia context. Most recently, at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, Rahimi worked on the legal history of Afghanistan and the ways that legal transplantation is legitimized in Muslim countries.

Moderator:

Mostafa Minawi is an associate professor of history and the director of the Critical Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Studies, Cornell University. He is the author of The Ottoman Scramble for Africa: Empire and Diplomacy in the Sahara and the Hijaz (Stanford University Press, 2016) and several other publications on Ottoman imperialism in Africa. He held several fellowships over the past few years, including the Alfred Howell Chair in Archeology and History at the American University of Beirut in 2019-20 and was a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Central European University in 2020-21.

This session will provide PhD students with information on the Einaudi Dissertation Proposal Development Program. The program offers seminars, workshops, and faculty mentoring to PhD students in the social sciences and humanities who are developing research projects abroad or domestic research projects on topics that connect to global issues. Students receive up to $5,000 for summer research. Workshop and seminar costs are also covered.

Contact: programming@einaudi.cornell.edu

Sites at the Periphery: Making Experimental Art Spaces in Beijing

Nancy P. Lin

Klarman Postdoctoral Fellow, Cornell University

The Pulse of Art History Lecture Series

9.28.21 4:45pm

Location: Goldwin Smith G22

Abstract:

Developing without the official support of state institutions, 1990s experimental art in China has often been described as “underground” or “independent.” In this talk, I suggest that the term “peripheral” is a much more apt description as it simultaneously refers to the actual spaces in which art has flourished at the urban fringes of the city and the spatial dynamics of experimental art’s alternative positioning. Exploring how site-based art activities in Beijing’s urban periphery interfaced with the city’s physical expansion, I show how art practices transformed overlooked urban spaces to connect local sites to global art networks.

Bio:

Nancy P. Lin is a 2021 Klarman Postdoctoral Fellow in Art History at Cornell University. She received her Ph.D. in Art History from The University of Chicago. Her research considers modern and contemporary Chinese art and architecture from a transregional perspective. Her current book project focuses on the intersection between art and urbanism in examining locally situated, yet globally oriented site-based art practices in China. Lin’s publications include a forthcoming chapter in the edited volume The Allure of Matter: Materiality Across Chinese Art (2021), an article in the Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art (Winter 2021), and a chapter in the edited volume Visual Arts, Representations and Interventions in Contemporary China: Urbanized Interface (2018).

Aesthetics and Ethics of Return: Trauma, Militarism and Modernities in Southeast Asia

Arguing for an ethics of return, the book Return Engagements is a political-economic critique of the nation-state, wars then and now, and global art markets, with a focus on Việt Nam and Cambodia. Artist, curator, and critic Việt Lê points out that artists of Southeast Asian descent are often expected to address the twin traumas of armed conflict and modernization on international art markets.

By returning to and refashioning the specters of military engagements and modernity, Dr. Lê argues in this talk that artists such as Sopheap Pich and Phan Quang employ “strategic cartographies” in ways that allow them to reinvent such aesthetics and discursive spaces.

Việt Lê is an artist, academic and curator whose work centers on spiritualities, trauma, representation, and sexualities with a focus on Southeast Asia and its diasporas. He is an Associate Professor of Visual Studies at the California College of the Arts.

He is the author of Return Engagements: Contemporary Art’s Traumas of Modernity and History in Sài Gòn and Phnom Penh (Duke University Press, 2021) and coauthor, White Gaze (2nd edition, w/ Latipa [née Michelle Dizon]; Sming Sming Books, 2019). He is a board member of Art Matters and the Queer Culture Center.

Image courtesy of the artist.

Visual Culture Colloquium

Tuesday, September 14, 2021 at 4:45pm

Min Ma Naing

Beyond Burmese Esthetics

Physical Event

Goldwin Smith Hall, G22

“I don’t find Burmese esthetics in your work.” This is a critique that Min Ma Naing, a photographer from Myanmar, has often received from international curators and editors. Living through dictatorships, conflicts, restrictive social norms, she and other local photographers have endured surviving in Myanmar. In her practice she seeks to challenge the idea of what Burmese esthetics is. In this talk, she will share the journeys of photographers who tell the inside stories of Myanmar, and with her photography, open the door to a conversation about what Burmese esthetics can be.

Bio:

Min Ma Naing is a personal documentary photographer from Myanmar, who was based in Yangon till June 2021. Starting out as a press photographer, she realized that short-term assignments are not for her. She then decided to focus on stories around love and hatred. She is also interested in making photobooks as art objects and has made a few books for herself and her art collective. She has adopted the temporary pseudonym “Min Ma Naing” because of the political situation in Myanmar. It means “The King Cannot Beat You”.

Image Credit: Min Ma Naing (pseudonym)

Image caption: “Untitled”, 2021, from the Faces of Change series, Yangon, Myanmar

“First, I felt angry, but I became sad as soon as I heard the news of the coup. But my anger eventually beat my sadness. We have lost our youth, dreams, hopes, and our loved ones in this revolution. Whenever I feel sad or weak in this long war, I am driven by my anger to carry on. I will be carrying this anger until we win.” - Social Worker, 27

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program provides full funding for graduate and professional students conducting research or teaching in any field in more than 150 countries. Open to U.S. citizens only.

The Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad program supports doctoral students conducting research in modern languages or area studies for six to 12 months. Open to U.S. citizens and permanent residents of the United States. Travel to Western European countries is not eligible.

Contact: fulbright@einaudi.cornell.edu

The Pulse of Art History Lecture Series

This talk presents a close analysis of a Persian text (1760-61CE) in praise of the Maklī necropolis in Sindh, now in modern-day Pakistan. I discuss the intertwining of Ṣufī beliefs with emotions and movement and sociability. The act of walking serves as a critical method for experiencing the sacrality of Maklī, not simply as a mode of reaching holy sites and following pilgrimage itineraries, but rather as an embodied experience that could enact significant emotional transformation upon the feeling subject. This research highlights the rich possibilities that poetic texts hold for excavating the affective dimensions of urban and funerary spaces in premodern South Asia.

Fatima Quraishi is Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History at the University of California, Riverside. Her current book project Necropolis as Palimpsest: The Makli Cemetery in Sindh, 1380-1660 is a longue-duree analysis of a vast funerary site in the south of Pakistan.

The event is only open to the Cornell community.