In this panel, Utku Balaban discusses the relationship between postwar urban growth and Islamic revivalism in Turkey. Rather than in a distant past dating back to the nineteenth century, the roots of the decades-long political success of Turkish Islamism lie in the growth of new working-class neighborhoods in the outskirts of metropolitan areas after the 1980s. Focusing on Istanbul, Balaban argues, Islamic revivalism in Turkey is an outcome of the vertical redevelopment of single-story slums into multistory buildings and the ensuing mushrooming of small industrial facilities in working-class neighborhoods in the 1980s. This dual development redefined Turkish Islamism as a cosmology to regulate the everyday life practices of urban workers and reframed the conflict-ridden relationship between the owners of these facilities and their urban workers as a religious fraternity based on a common urban culture. Turkish Islamism is not old and provincial, but new and urban. After Balaban’s presentation, Pamela Karimi and Ijlal Muzaffar will respond from the perspectives of their own research in Tehran and Karachi.

Speaker:
Utku Balaban | Amherst College

Response by:
Pamela Karimi | UMass Dartmouth
Ijlal Muzaffar | Rhode Island School of Design

Moderated by Esra Akcan | Cornell University

This panel is organized as part of the Institute for European Studies’ partnership with MESA Global Academy. It is sponsored by the MESA Global Academy. You may find information about past events and video recordings at https://einaudi.cornell.edu/programs/institute-european-studies/events/….

Swati Chattopadhyay is a professor in the Department of History of Art and Architecture, and an affiliated faculty in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of California–Santa Barbara. An architect and architectural historian, she specializes in modern architecture and urbanism, and the cultural landscape of the British empire.

She is the author of Representing Calcutta: Modernity, Nationalism, and the Colonial Uncanny (2005); Unlearning the City: Infrastructure in a New Optical Field (2012); and the coeditor with Jeremy White of City Halls and Civic Materialism: Towards a Global History of Urban Public Space (2014), and Routledge Companion to Critical Approaches to Contemporary Architecture (2019). Her current work includes two digital humanities projects, Mapping the Ephemeral, and Bookscapes. Her forthcoming book is titled, A Geography of Small Spaces.

Her awards include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, American Institute of Indian Studies, Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, J. Paul Getty Foundation, Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, National Science Foundation, and a distinguished visiting fellowship from Queen Mary University of London. She has served as a director of the Subaltern-Popular Workshop, a University of California Multicampus Research Group, and as the editor of the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. In 2018 she was named a fellow of the Society of Architectural Historians for a lifetime of significant contribution to the field. She is a founding editor of PLATFORM.

Introduction by Esra Akcan
Please register here for the lecture.

Joshua Neves, Associate Professor and Director of the Global Emergent Media (GEM) Lab at Concordia University (Montréal).

Dr. Neves writes: This talk examines the relationship between special effects and Asia or the South—what I am calling southern effects. It has two major lines of inquiry. The first focuses on cultural circulation. It begins with monstrous and magical cinematic histories before tracing the recent effects of these southern trajectories. Secondly, it explores the role of technological-economic distribution as a form of production. Special effects are now central to Asian media, shaping not only their relationship to global markets but emergent popular geographies. The link between these two global modalities—one obtaining from imperial legacies, the other, from the economic-cultural “rise” of Asia, focuses our attention on special effects as a key node of the global-popular. Tracing a particular genealogy of special effects in Asia, the talk will move from King Kong (1933) and Godzilla (1954) to the 2013 Chinese-Korean blockbuster Mr. Go (Kim Yong-hwa, 2013) and the 2021 release of King Kong vs. Godzilla, among others.

Bio: Joshua Nevesis Associate Professor and Director of the Global Emergent Media (GEM) Lab at Concordia University (Montréal). His research centers on digital media, cultural and political theory, and problems of development and legitimacy. He is the co-author of TechnoPharmacology(forthcoming), and author of Underglobalization: Beijing’s Media Urbanism and the Chimera of Legitimacy(Duke 2020), and co-editor of Asian Video Cultures: In the Penumbra of the Global (Duke 2017).

Presented by the Cornell EastAsia+ Initiative, a collective of scholars, publishing professionals, curators, and graduate students dedicated to exploring new possibilities for academic publishing, networking, and collaboration in East Asia media studies and digital humanities research.

EastAsia+ is generously supported by funding from Cornell University’s Society for the Humanities.

Nobel prize–winning economist Amartya Sen joins Cornell’s Kaushik Basu for the 2021 Bartels World Affairs Lecture, hosted by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.

At the turn of the millennium, many would have said that understanding the need for democracy was the most important change in the world over the preceding century. Yet in the past 20 years, democracy has been treated with contempt and hostility in many parts of the world—including countries in the West (such as Hungary, Poland, and others), but also elsewhere.

It is important to ask why this is happening and how we should deal with it, Sen advises.

“Some countries seem to be undergoing a big transition in this respect, and my own country, India, may be a significant example—despite its being often described as the largest democracy in the world, which in some sense it still is,” Sen said. “As someone who is dismayed by recent developments, I would like to discuss the nature of the problems we may be facing and what can be done about them.”

Sen’s talk, “Attacks on Democracy,” will kick off a discussion with Cornell faculty and students moderated by Basu. Three faculty commentators and audience members, including several students, will join Sen for conversation and Q&A on democratic challenges—and ways forward. The event is part of the Einaudi Center’s democratic resilience global research theme.

Amartya Sen is Thomas W. Lamont University Professor and professor of economics and philosophy at Harvard University. He has served as president of the Econometric Society, American Economic Association, Indian Economic Association, and International Economic Association. Translated into more than 40 languages, Sen’s books include Collective Choice and Social Welfare (1970, 2017), Development as Freedom (1999), Identity and Violence (2006), and The Idea of Justice (2009). Sen’s awards include the Bharat Ratna (India); Commandeur de la Legion d'Honneur (France); National Humanities Medal, George Marshall Award, and Eisenhower Medal (USA); Bodley Medal and Edinburgh Medal (UK); Ordem do Merito Cientifico (Brazil); Aztec Eagle (Mexico); and the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Moderator:
Kaushik Basu is the Carl Marks Professor of International Studies, professor of economics in the College of Arts and Sciences, and former senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank.

Faculty Commentators:
Robert Hockett, Edward Cornell Professor of Law, Cornell University

Marco Battaglini, Edward H. Meyer Professor of Economics, Cornell University

Rachana Kamtekar, Professor of Philosophy, Cornell University

The Bartels World Affairs Lecture was established in 1984 to foster a broadened worldview among Cornell students, especially undergraduates. The lecture and related events are made possible by the generosity of Henry E. Bartels ’48 and Nancy Horton Bartels ’48.

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Our hearts are with Cornellians currently in India and South Asia, or with family or friends in the region, during the COVID-19 tragedy. Consider supporting this aid effort led by South Asian students, including Cornellians.

Abstract: In this talk, I trace the contemporary circulation of “golden era” 1960s and 1970s Cambodian popular music recordings as a global media archeology. I seek to contextualize and historicize revivals of pre-Khmer Rouge “Cambodian Rock” through the mediated movements of cassette tapes among North American independent labels and the activities of online archivists and heritage centers in present-day Cambodia, as well as in the documentary film Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten, the play Cambodian Rock Band, and the Los Angeles based group Dengue Fever. Drawing from ethnographic interviews with contemporary preservationists and reissue labels in Cambodia, California, Oregon, and Massachusetts, I consider the role of music in memories of genocide and war, the importance of physical materials in the global recognition of Southeast Asian history, and the ethical politics of media access in the transition to a digital archive.

Bio: David Novak is Associate Professor and Director of the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Music at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Japanoise: Music at the Edge of Circulation (2103) and co-editor of Keywords in Sound (2015). His current book project, Diggers: A Media Archaeology of Global Popular Music, theorizes musical globalization through networks of record and cassette collectors, labels, archives, and digital preservation projects.

https://cornell.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMqfuCgqjktGNxQYcYzNCDbVwr4pG…

Presented by Music Graduate Association and GPSFAC

Join us for a panel discussion with SEAP alumni on Life After Cornell, and see where your study of Southeast Asia can take you!

Featured Guests:

Stuart Liventals, Director Citigroup Global Markets, Singapore Pte. Ltd.Gail Fletcher, Photo Editor, National GeographicEthel Roxas, Senior Public Engagement & Collaboration Research Manager, UCLA School of MedicineAye Min Thant, journalist based in Myanmar and ThailandLeighton Cook, legal clerk, Champaign County Circuit Clerk's OfficeThis event is a part of Southeast Asia Language Month! Current Cornell students can participate and compete for a $100 Amazon gift card and other prizes.
1. Download the GooseChase App
2. Enter code 3KX9D9
(or search for "Southeast Asia Language Month")
3. Complete missions and attend events to earn points