Cornell Public Health faculty are convening a series of working meetings with students and researchers from Cornell peer institutions to explore the conditions that allow for emerging communicable diseases. Grounded in One Health and Planetary Health paradigms (how humans interact with, influence, and are influenced by our natural environments, including the health of animals), the team is using outbreak case studies of the past and present to understand root causes, and to develop shared recommendations and action plans for the future that consider intersecting factors such as wildlife trade and management, food system drivers and consequences, cultural norms, public health and regulatory systems, and multi-national systems strengthening opportunities.

Presenter: Gen Meredith, DrPH, Associate Director, Cornell University Master of Public Health program

Register: https://cornell.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_CS7DED_eT2qd-eSWorW_IQ

Part of the series "Migrations: A Global, Interdisciplinary, Multi-Species Examination"

Shuang Shen is an Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Chinese, Penn State University

This paper situates Cantonese literature in the context of several key programmatic changes of language in the twentieth-century Sinosphere, including language reforms, language movements, or language policies. It aims to show how Cantonese literature critically engages with “accessibility” as a cultural and political issue through navigating through certain fetishized divisions between the classical and the modern, script and sound, the national and the regional, Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese dialect. The paper examines a number of cases drawn from a variety of literary treatises and texts, including Lu Xun’s essays on Hong Kong (1927), Lin Shouling’s serial fiction Diary of a Muddleheaded Man (1950’s), and the documents related to the Chinese Language Movement of early 1970’s.

ROUGH WORK: Discussing research in progress, hence the term, 'rough work.' This rough work session is hosted by EAP core faculty member, Andrea Bachner.

Speaker: Emily T. Yeh is Professor of Geography at the University of Colorado Boulder

Abstract: Although infrastructure is conventionally thought of in reference to human-designed systems such as railroads, pipelines, tunnels, and ports, landscapes, and nature itself are also increasingly being understood as infrastructure through terms such as “natural infrastructure” and “green infrastructure,” which tend to focus on the concept of ecosystem services. Taking an infrastructural lens onto natural infrastructure projects in the context of Xi Jinping’s call for ecological civilization, this paper argues that new calculative tools obscure the profoundly political nature of ecological red lines and ecological functional zones, which effectively enframe China’s national territory as an object of optimization. The paper then explores a specific aspect of the project of ecological civilization: campaigns to dismantle and destroy infrastructure deemed to be in violation of environmental regulations. I theorize this as a form of “destructive production” of natural infrastructure and provide two case studies of the dismantling of scenic areas not long after their reconstruction following the Wenchuan Earthquake in Sichuan.

Bio: Emily T. Yeh is Professor of Geography at the University of Colorado Boulder, USA. She is the author of Taming Tibet: Landscape Transformation and the Gift of Chinese Development, and co-editor of Mapping Shangrila: Contested Landscapes in the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands, and Rural Politics in Contemporary China.

Faculty host: John (Jack) Zinda, Developmental Sociology

Co-sponsored by Cornell Department of Global Development

and The Polson Institute for Global Development

Between 1724 and 1730, Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II of Jaipur constructed five astronomical observatories, called Jantar Mantars, in northern India. The four remaining observatories are an extraordinary fusion of architecture and science, combining elements of astronomy, astrology, and geometry into forms of remarkable beauty. The observatories’ large scale and striking geometric forms have captivated the attention of architects, artists, scientists, and historians worldwide, yet their purpose and use remain largely unknown to the public.

In this lavishly illustrated lecture, Professor Perlus will take us on a virtual walk through the observatories. We will pause to look at a few of the most important astronomical instruments, and along the way Professor Perlus will tell us about naked-eye sky observation and the unique designs Jai Singh developed to ensure the accuracy and functionality of his measurements. To illustrate his lecture, Professor Perlus will be using the immersive virtual tours and media features of the website he created about the Jantar Mantars, www.jantarmantar.org. Perlus will also draw upon material from his recently published book, Celestial Mirror: The Astronomical Observatories of Jai Singh II.

Barry Perlus is an Associate Professor Emeritus in the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning at Cornell University, where he taught courses in photography and studio art between 1984 and 2019. With an avid interest in both art and science, his artistic practice includes projects in photography and digital media, notably panoramic and immersive imagery. As an artist / scholar / author/ educator, Professor Perlus has received numerous grants to support his work, including from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Study in the Fine Arts and the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies at Cornell. Portfolios of his photographs have appeared national publications such as Parabola magazine and Progressive Architecture and his work has been shown in more than 50 one-person and group exhibitions both in the U.S. and abroad.

Rescheduled from April, Dr. Daisy Wang will present this year's annual Stoikov Lecture, "Who is Lai Fong? New Perspectives on 19th-Century Photography in China" as a free webinar.

Daisy Wang is deputy director of the Hong Kong Palace Museum, which will open its doors in 2022. She was previously the Robert N. Shapiro Curator of Chinese and East Asian Art at the Peabody Essex Museum and the Chinese art specialist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art (formerly Freer and Sackler). She cocurated the groundbreaking exhibition Empresses of China’s Forbidden City, a collaboration between the Peabody Essex, the Arthur M. Sackler Museum in Washington, DC, and Beijing’s Palace Museum.

Kate Addleman-Frankel, the Gary and Ellen Davis Curator of Photography at the Johnson; Stacey Lambrow, curator of the Loewentheil Photography of China Collection; and Yuhua Ding, PhD 2020, former curatorial assistant for Asian art at the Johnson, will share selected research findings from their recent exhibition, Lai Fong (ca. 1839–1890): Photographer of China.

This lecture is supported by the Stoikov Asian Art Lecture Fund at the Johnson, which was funded by a generous gift from Judith Stoikov, Class of 1963.

Free registration is required to attend this virtual event via Zoom.

How is the coronavirus crisis affecting immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees? Einaudi Center Migrations faculty fellows Gunisha Kaur, MD and Steve Yale-Loehr, JD will discuss key topics including healthcare access, public benefits, and detention policies these populations face. They will also share from their ongoing project, “Advancing the health of refugee and immigrant populations by increasing knowledge of legal rights through digital tools.”

Presenters:
Gunisha Kaur, Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology and Medical Director, Weill Cornell Center for Human Rights

Steve Yale-Loehr, Professor of Immigration Law Practice at Cornell Law School and Co-Director, Asylum and Convention Against Torture Appellate Clinic

Register: https://cornell.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Tefz76EFSBKAZwCmGAKZVg

Part of the series "Migrations: A Global, Interdisciplinary, Multi-Species Examination"

This panel is organized to bring together architects and planners to comment on the ongoing reconstructions in Beirut after the deadly explosion of August 4, 2020, by contextualizing it in the city’s urban development and the relatively recent urban reconstruction of its center after the civil war. How, when, and by whom should the reconstruction projects be designed and implemented? What are lessons learned from the reconstruction of the city center after the civil war? With the looming danger of opportunistic gentrification, how might the reconstruction process alter the area’s use and the lives and livelihoods of its residents? How may it affect Beirut’s place in the world cultural heritage and global imagination? How can international organizations and academic institutions partner with local organizations for the redesign/rebuilding of the destroyed neighborhoods? How should the different affected neighborhoods be approached when it comes to redesign/rebuilding?

Speakers

Elie Haddad | Lebanese American UniversityMona Harb | American University of BeirutModerator

Mostafa Minawi | Cornell University Panel Questions

Elie Boutros | Cornell AlumniDana Muhsen | Cornell AlumniThe panel is sponsored by the Institute for European Studies (IES) and the Ottoman & Turkish Studies Initiative (OTSI) of the Einaudi Center for International Studies at Cornell University. It is organized as part of the IES Migration Series for its AY 2020-21 theme Repair and Reparations. You may find information about the past events including their video recordings here: https://einaudi.cornell.edu/programs/institute-european-studies/events/…

For questions or accessibility accommodations, please contact Pamela Hampton ph55@cornell.edu

Studying the ties and practices that bind Tamils to the districts they inhabit or visit is essential to understand not the ways Tamils use and transform space in diaspora. The territorialization of Tamil identity, that is, their spatial extension and the continuation of their socio-cultural practices, is not always immediately visible in multi-ethnic cities in which Tamils are a minority. Tamils transform those spaces where they are dominant according to their own cultural and social practices and establish venues conducive to social interactions. Furthermore, the polarization of space and the dynamics of identity networks explains the various attitudes of Tamils towards the social frequentation of certain areas. Finally, the presence and role of places of sociability, such as religious, cultural or commercial establishments, are essential to understand Tamils’ relationship with locality and thus the reasons for which these districts are recognized -or not- as “Tamil” by Tamils themselves.

With specific examples drawn from fieldworks in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Paris, this paper will show that the affirmation of Tamil identity and the constitution of Tamil ‘ethnoterritories’ in certain areas is not only the outcome of Tamil action but also the consequence of state-sponsored urban planning policies, such as eradication of slums, gentrification and heritagization of specific zones, and the frequentation of these zones by non-Tamil migrants.

Delon Madavan was the Tamil Studies Visiting Scholar at Cornell's South Asia Program in Spring 2020. He completed his PhD in Geography at Paris-Sorbonne University (France) in 2013. He has taught at the Department of Geography at Sorbonne University and also gave lectures at the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations (INALCO) in Paris. Madavan is Researcher Fellow at the Centre of Studies and Researches on India, South Asia and its Diaspora (University of Québec à Montréal, Canada) and Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Centre of Studies and Researches on India and South Asia (CNRS-EHESS, France). In his research, he examines the articulation between migration, identity and space to analyze forms of integration of the Tamil populations in several cities (Jaffna, Colombo, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Paris & Montréal). Madavan is the author and co-author of several articles and books on Tamils in Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore and France.

Respondent:

Sharika Thiranagama is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University. Her research explores the intersection of political mobilization and domestic life, focusing on highly fraught contexts of violence, inequality, and intense political mobilization. Her major work has been on the Sri Lankan civil war and research with two different minority ethnic groups, Sri Lankan Tamils and Sri Lankan Muslims, exploring the ways in which militancy, political violence and large-scale displacement became folded into intergenerational transmissions of memory and ethnic identification. Most recently, in new fieldwork on Dalit communities in Kerala, South India, she examines how communist led political mobilization reconfigured older caste identities, re-entrenching caste inequities into new kinds of private neighborhood life. She focuses on the household as the prime site of the inheritance of work, stigma and servitude as well as the possibility of reproduction, dignity and social mobility. She is the author of In My Mother’s House: Civil War in Sri Lanka (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011).