***Formerly titled "South of the Clouds, North of the Nagas: Yunnan's Changing Role in the Mekong Region." The title and abstract of this talk have changed slightly.***

Part of the Ronald and Janette Gatty Lecture series

Dr. Juliet Lu, Atkinson Center for Sustainability Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Development Sociology, Cornell University

Since the late 1990s, Chinese investment in Laos has grown exponentially and is transforming many areas of the country. Chinese actors involved in driving this expansion, from traders to agribusiness firms to state officials, tend to insist that these investments are not just business endeavours but drivers of development. They often compare Laos to China 30 years ago in terms of its degree of economic development, articulating a narrative that China’s model of development can be exported and applied in other countries. In this talk, I present multiple perspectives on how ideals of development translate from China into the Lao context. I use the stories of three groups of actors engaged in the cross-border agribusiness investments and trade to show how narratives of development are rooted in personal histories and ties to China. These experiences often differ and the narratives of development that individual actors tell are motivated by their own strategic interests. Still, they demonstrate the tendency to compare the two countries as a way of understanding the rapid transformation of Laos through Chinese investment, and of considering broader implications for the future.

Part of the Ronald and Janette Gatty Lecture series

Gavin Douglas, Professor of Ethnomusicology and Adjunct Professor of Anthropology, UNC Greensboro

According to the seventh Buddhist precept, participation in musical events in the Theravada Buddhist world is deemed inappropriate for devote laity and those who have taken monastic vows. However, in practice, the life of lay Buddhists and monks is filled with sculpted sound. In this talk, I will examine this precept among the activities of Buddhists in Myanmar. In addition to many Buddhist inflected traditions that are recognized as music (zat theatre, thachin gyi, dhamma gita), there are numerous others situation where sound is musically organized to further Buddhist goals (paritta chants, prayers, sermons, bells and gongs to mark ritual moments). Interviews with Burmese monks, devote laity, instrument makers, and musicians documented by audio and video reveal many contradictory interpretations of the seventh precept. For Buddhist scholars, I aim to highlight the significant and largely unacknowledged role that sculpted sound plays in Buddhist practice. For music scholars, I will reveal sonics domains that have previously generated little attention.

Part of the Ronald and Janette Gatty Lecture series

Alexandra Dalferro, PhD Candidate in Sociocultural Anthropology, Cornell University

Silk textiles woven in Surin Province are recognized across Thailand for the complex matmi, or ikat, patterns they bear. Matmi patterns are achieved by tying hundreds of knots around bunches of threads to prevent color from seeping in and dyeing them in stages before they are woven. Master weavers design patterns that are quickly circulated and “copied” by other weavers, much to the dismay of the business owners who hold exclusive rights to sell some masters' sought-after silks. This talk engages the materiality of knots and techniques of knotting to think about power, ownership, and expertise among weavers and other competing actors in the silk industry in Surin. Focusing on the activities of master weaver Khru Aromdi, I examine discourses and debates about matmi copying. While tacit agreement exists among most designers that certain motifs and established patterns are part of a shared heritage and can’t be claimed by any one individual, this category’s boundaries often dissolve in practice, as distinct understandings of what constitutes “copying” are mobilized to accomplish various ends. Drawing from over one year of fieldwork in Surin, I foreground the specifics of everyday articulations of matmee imitation and the strategies developed both to facilitate and prevent copying. These moments reflect how actors grapple with tensions as they knot matmi bundles whose threads can be followed to discern tangles and patterns that are both visual and graphic, and cosmological and ideological.

Part of the Ronald and Janette Gatty Lecture series

Mai Van Tran, Ph.D., Department of Government, Cornell University

What accounts for the survival and long-term commitment of activists to social movements under repression? I argue for the role of an important yet oft-neglected player: civilian bystanders and observers of opposition activism. I propose that protective support by ordinary citizens helps the activists to escape crackdowns and bolsters their attachment to their movement. To test my argument, I study hard cases for activist survival during both protest and non-protest periods under the two decades of Burmese military rule 1988-2010, with an original qualitative dataset consisting of semi-structured interviews and written testimony of more than 100 ordinary citizens and former pro-democracy activists in Myanmar. The novelty of this dataset is the unprecedented number of voices from the average, non-contentious general public, which are mostly missing in existing research on social movements. This approach generates a novel perspective to better understand opportunities and constraints around movement entrepreneurs.

1988 > Hong Kong > Directed by Wong Kar Wai
With Andy Lau, Maggie Cheung, Jacky Cheung
Set amidst Hong Kong's ruthless, neon-lit gangland underworld, this operatic saga of ambition, honor, and revenge stars Andy Lau as a small-time mob enforcer who finds himself torn between a burgeoning romance with his ailing cousin and his loyalty to his loose cannon partner in crime whose reckless attempts to make a name for himself unleash a spiral of violence. Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar Wai's first feature length film. In Cantonese. Subtitled. Cosponsored with the East Asia Program.
1 hr 42 min

We will start taking reservations one week in advance of a film's first play date.
Reservations can be made here:
https://cinema.cornell.edu/virtual-cinema-order-form

Part of the Ronald and Janette Gatty Lecture series

John Burgess, independent author and journalist, former Washington Post journalist and author of Angkor's Temples in the Modern Era: War, Pride, and Tourist Dollars

Angkor, capital of the Khmer Empire for close to six centuries, has had a rich and varied history since the French reintroduced it to the outside world in the 1860s. Amateur archaeology, steamboat tourism, the temples’ emergence as a symbol of the Cambodian nation, and repeated military struggles for control of the site have shaped its past century and a half. Angkor’s ability to draw people from beyond Cambodia’s borders has resulted in conservation and economic gain but also in conflicts, both among the foreigners and with Cambodians for whom Angkor was and is home.

Part of the Ronald and Janette Gatty Lecture series

Cherubim Quizon, Associate Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, Social Work and Criminal Justice, Seton Hall University

The magical and spiritual power of red cloth has a long and complex story in the Philippines and Southeast Asia. The revolutionary reds in flags, banners and amulets that sustained indigenous bodies in colonial struggles have been broadly approached through the lens of history and philology. Depending on political exigency, they are associated with valor or insurrection; when approached as antiquities, they are valued as chiefly markers often mapped to the killing of men. How do these ideas hold up when understanding the significance of red cloth among indigenous peoples in Mindanao? Focusing on Bagobo textile practices, the paper suggests that the dye plant Morinda sp. when applied to indigenous thread creates conditions that metonymically and procedurally link redness with effort and efficacy that operates within a larger indigenous semantic category of prestige cloths. Comparing Mindanao textile practices to Indonesia and Malaysia suggest broader semantic implications. In seeking to expand semiogenesis beyond the anecdotal dependence on redness and bloodshed that has dominated the literature on Bagobo “warrior” textiles, this paper argues that perspectives from the domain knowledge of the women who make such cloths provides a more robust understanding of textiles as material culture practice in general, and the meanings that we can reasonably associate with indigenous cloth and dress in particular.

Part of the Ronald and Janette Gatty Lecture series

Pittayawat (Joe) Pittayaporn, Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics; head of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Research Unit, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University

The linguistic landscape of central Thailand prior to the 13th century was radically different from today. It is generally believed that the area was pre-dominantly Mon-Khmer speaking. O’Connor (1995) suggests that the Tai migration into Southeast Asia started in the first millennium A.D. Diller (2000) similarly suggests that the southwest-ward migration of Tai speakers started in the 10th century. In this talk, I discuss when and how Old Thai, the language attested in 14th-15th century inscriptions, came to replace aboriginal languages of the area. By examining its development from Proto-Southwestern Tai (Pittayaporn 2009), I argue that Old Thai was first spoken in central Thailand some time before the oldest surviving Thai text was inscribed, perhaps in the 13th century. In addition, I hypothesize based on linguistic and genetic evidence that the Thai language came to dominate central Thailand mainly through migration of Tai-speaking population, rather than ethnolinguistic assimilation of indigenous non-Tai speakers.

2019 > France > Directed by CŽline Sciamma
With Noemie Merlant, Adele Haenel, Luana Bajrami
In the late 18th century, Marianne, a young painter, recalls being commissioned to secretly paint a wedding portrait of Heloise, the daughter of a French aristocrat and reluctant bride. As the bond between the women grows deeper, the portrait becomes a collaborative testament of their love. In French. Subtitled. More at portraitmovie.com
2 hrs 1 min

We will start taking reservations one week in advance of a film's first play date.
Reservations can be made here:
https://cinema.cornell.edu/virtual-cinema-order-form

Ithaca Premiere>2018 > France > Directed by Thomas Lilti
With Vincent Lacoste, William Lebghil, Michel Lerousseau
The Freshmen follows Antoine, who is about to start his first year of medical school... for the third time. Meanwhile, Benjamin, fresh out of high school, will have his first stab at it. He soon realizes that it's not exactly a walk in the park. With nights dedicated to hard studying, rather than hard partying, the two freshmen will have to adapt and find a middle ground between despair for the present and hope for the future. In French. Subtitled. More at www.distribfilmsus.com/portfolio/the-freshmen-french-film
1 hr 32 min

We will start taking reservations one week in advance of a film's first play date.
Reservations can be made here:
https://cinema.cornell.edu/virtual-cinema-order-form