Dearest Lenny interweaves the account of Leonard Bernstein’s transformation from an American icon into a world maestro with an intimate story of his relationships with two Japanese individuals: Kazuko Amano, a loyal fan who began writing letters to Bernstein in 1947, and Kunihiko Hashimoto, a young man who fell deeply in love with Bernstein in 1979 and later became his business representative. During the period in which these two relationships unfolded, Japan’s place in the world and its relationship vis-à-vis the United States changed dramatically, which in turn shaped Bernstein’s connection to the country. Yoshihara will trace the making of a global Bernstein amidst the shifting political economy of the arts and global politics that made this American celebrity turn increasingly to Europe and Japan.

Speaker: Mari Yoshihara, Professor, and Chair of American Studies University of Hawaii at Manoa

For accessibility needs, please email eap@cornell.edu with Accessibility in the subject heading and describe your need. We need at least 3 business days advance notice but will work to accommodate all participants.

Peace and Conflict Studies Institute Reading Group for September 17; note special time of 12:30-1:45. Jack Paine, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Rochester, will join us for a discussion of "Strategic Civil War Aims and the Resource Curse." Please note that the author will not give a formal presentation of their work, so it is best to read in advance.

Please pre-register at https://cornell.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYudOyvqD4sHtVW8e9SkZDvsj3ilM…, and a link to the reading will be sent to you with the registration confirmation. Please contact pacs@cornell.edu with any questions.

Get your classical Chinese mojo going with: "Rhetorical and Receptional Politics of Cheng Xuanying’s (ca. 605-690) Commentary on Zhuangzi"

Shuheng "Diana" Zhang, a Ph.D. student at the University of Pennsylvania presents.

CCCC is a reading group for students and scholars with an interest in premodern Sinographic text.

All are welcome, at any level of experience with classical Chinese. Please email us to register and receive the log-in credentials.

At each session, one participant presents a text in classical Chinese. Attendees discuss historical, literary, linguistic, and other aspects of the text, and work together to resolve difficulties in comprehension and translation.

Presentations include works of all sorts, from the earliest times to the twentieth century.

No preparation required: all texts will be distributed at the meeting.

Although it took several decades of armor-piercing scholarship, now that the road is paved and rap has claimed its place within scholarly discourse, more central issues than the irritating (though inevitable) task of constantly proving rap’s (self-evident) artistic nature can finally be addressed. In this talk I will discuss Ice Cube’s track “I wanna Kill Sam” and Racionais MC’s’s track “Racistas otários.” The two tracks have in common the fact that they address the experiences of Black people through their relationship with public policies and institutions that claim to promote the emancipation of Black people in Brazil and in the USA. My goal is to show that the Racionais and Ice Cube symbolically (re)dimension contemporary “Blackness” as a result of the constant physical and symbolic clashes that started back in the slavery regime.

Professor Dutra has recently been announced as a 2020 semifinalist for the highly prestigious and internationally recognized Prêmio Oceanos, the Oceanos Prize for Literature in the Portuguese Language for his poetry book, Abliteraçōes, which was selected as one of 54 semifinalists out of 1,872 entries, only 17 of which were poetry books. The article can be found at: http://news.unm.edu/news/unm-professor-s-book-a-semi-finalist-for-portu…

Please register through the following link:

https://cornell.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_90nM6G_URPGzl0ZIp3vReg

What impact will the U.S. elections have on Latin America and U.S.-Latin American relations? A panel of Cornell professors will discuss how the Trump and Biden foreign policy teams approach Latin America and how they are likely to address hemispheric issues like trade and economic integration, criminal violence and security, immigration, and challenges to democratic rule.

Panel:
Lourdes S. Casanova, Johnson Graduate School of Management
Professor Gustavo A. Flores-Macías, Government
Professor Kenneth Roberts, Government

Moderator: Angie Torres, LASP Graduate Fellow '20-'21

Please register through the following link:

https://cornell.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Xx611aBUQBCpnfrMLIxB8A

The annual International Fair showcases Cornell's global opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students. Explore our virtual fair on September 8 and find out about international majors and minors, language study, fellowships, internships, study abroad, exchanges, service learning, and more.

The International Fair is sponsored by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, the Office of Global Learning (both part of Global Cornell), and Cornell's Language Resource Center. The Fair will be held as a virtual event via Zoom, with each virtual table set up as a Zoom meeting. Register now to receive an e-mail containing links/access information for all virtual tables. During the event, you will be able to come and go from each table at any point (to join a new table, close out of your current table and then click the link for the table you wish to join).

If you are not able to join the event synchronously, the confirmation e-mail will also contain contact information for all participating units. Video clips and other resources will be available after the fair.

International Fair participating units and schedule

This panel is organized to bring together scholars and analysts to comment on the recent conversion of the Hagia Sophia from a museum into a mosque from the perspective of architectural history in geopolitical context.

What is the building’s significance for Byzantine, early and late Ottoman, Republican and contemporary Turkish architecture? How will the Hagia Sophia’s conversion into a mosque in 2020 impact its use, global and local public meaning, place in the city and nearby monuments, physical attributes, Byzantine mosaics, Christian and Muslim symbols, marble floor, and acoustics, among other things? What effects did the building’s recent conversion make in different areas of historical studies? Are there comparable examples elsewhere in the world?

Speakers will make 8-minute presentations in the rough chronological order of their historical field of expertise and comment on the contemporary decision from the perspectives of their own scholarly work and study area. After a discussion where speakers respond to each other, the panel will conclude with a Q and A session.

Panelists in order of presentation:

Namık Erkal TED University in AnkaraBissera Pentcheva Stanford UniversityChristina Maranci Tufts UniversityMaria Georgopoulou American School of Classical Studies at AthensSevil Enginsoy Istanbul Bilgi UniversityÇiğdem Kafesçioğlu Boğaziçi UniversityBelgin Turan Middle East Technical UniversityPeter Christensen Co-Moderator, University of RochesterNikos Magouliotis ETH ZurichEsra Akcan Co-Moderator, Cornell UniversityMesut Dinler Politecnico di TorinoMücahit Bilici City University of New YorkBülent Batuman Bilkent UniversityThe panel is organized by the Institute for European Studies of Einaudi Center for International Studies at Cornell University. Funding is provided by the Central New York Humanities Corridor, as part of the multi-year event series "New Approaches to Scholarship and Pedagogy of Ottoman and Turkish Architecture" organized by Esra Akcan (Cornell University) and Peter Christensen (University of Rochester).