The Caribbean has been identified as a region particularly vulnerable to changing climates, where conservation imperatives have advocated for the protection of fragile ocean ecosystems. As shifting ocean environments refigure marine ecosystems, making fish scarce in the shallows, diver fishermen along the coasts of the Dominican Republic dive deeper and stay longer in risky conditions. As a result, decompression sickness (the bends) has become a pervasive injury, and a way that coastal communities experience changing ocean health. In this talk, I examine the connections between bodily health and environmental health among Dominican diver fishermen, alongside the ways marine conservation initiatives further marginalize the health and well-being of fishing communities. Drawing from ethnographic research with divers who “caught air,” the local term for the bends, I argue that decompression sickness is a symptom of the overlapping injustices of ecologies in decline and colonial conceptualizations of conservation in the Caribbean.

Kyrstin Mallon Andrews is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Syracuse University. Her work explores shifting ocean ecosystems, environmental politics, and experiences of health among spearfishermen in the Dominican Republic. Her articles and photo essays have appeared in American Anthropologist, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, and Current Anthropology.

"Implementing Undergraduate TAs in the Language Curriculum"
Mijeong Mimi Kim
Teaching Professor of Korean Language and Director of Undergraduate Studies, Washington University in St. Louis

This presentation examines the strategic integration of Undergraduate Teaching Assistants (UTAs) into the Korean language program at Washington University in St. Louis, drawing from 15 years of implementation experience. The model can be adapted across diverse language instruction contexts, offering valuable insights applicable to language programs more broadly. The presentation highlights how UTAs create opportunities for improved language proficiency, increased speaking confidence, and enhanced cultural understanding through structured peer interactions. By facilitating additional practice opportunities, UTAs help build supportive learning communities both within and beyond classroom settings.
The session provides practical frameworks for effective UTA recruitment, training, and retention strategies adaptable to various language programs. As integrated members of the language curriculum, UTAs receive course credit and benefit from experiential learning through direct teaching practice, exposure to diverse cultural perspectives, and reflective examination of their own language use. Furthermore, the UTA model promotes diversity, equity, and inclusion by incorporating varied linguistic and cultural perspectives into the learning environment. UTAs foster inclusive and accessible learning spaces where students comfortably practice language skills, addressing individual learner challenges through targeted supplemental support. UTAs link formal instruction to authentic language experiences, establishing meaningful pathways for language acquisition and cultivating inclusive learning communities where learning becomes a shared and enriching experience.

Bio: Mijeong Mimi Kim is a Teaching Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Washington University in St. Louis, where she serves as Director of Undergraduate Studies. She also coordinated the Korean language program through 2024. Since joining the university in 2002, she has taught Korean at all levels, developed curricula for both traditional and heritage learners, and founded the WashU Coalition for Language Teaching and Learning, which promotes collaboration among language faculty and students.
Dr. Kim's interests include language pedagogy, curriculum design, and technology-enhanced instruction. Drawing on critical pedagogy, she creates content-based curricula that immerse students in Korean culture through media, fostering both language proficiency and cultural agency. She is co-author of several textbooks, including the You Speak Korean OER series (2023), Advanced Korean (2021), and Tigers, Fairies, and Gods: Enchanting Folktales from Korea (2019). She has served on the Executive Board of the American Association of Teachers of Korean (AATK) and contributed to national initiatives such as the Standards-Based Korean Language Curriculum project and the Korean Honor Society (KHS). Dr. Kim is committed to student-centered pedagogy that integrates cultural literacy into language education, recognizing its transformative potential in cultivating global citizenship.

This event will be held in person in G25 Stimson and will also be streamed live over Zoom (registration required). Join us at the LRC or on Zoom.

The event is free and open to the public.

"The Rise of OER in Language Teaching and Learning"
Fernando Rubio
Director of the Center for Language Study, Yale University

Compared with STEM fields, second language (L2) education has only recently begun to embrace open education and the new knowledge ecologies it produces. L2 educators may have been hesitant to participate in the open education movement due to a lack of research which investigates the benefits and challenges of L2 learning and teaching in open environments. This talk contextualizes open education in L2 learning and teaching in terms of a dynamic ecology, along with a discussion of how the open movement affects L2 education beyond the classroom context. Also discussed will be the new ways of creating, adapting, and curating OER for language learning.

Bio: Fernando Rubio currently serves as the Director of the Center for Language Study at Yale University. Prior to that, he was a Professor of Spanish Linguistics in the Department of World Languages and Cultures and co-founder and Director of the Second Language Teaching and Research Center at the University of Utah. Over the past two decades, he has been actively involved in various professional organizations, including The Modern Language Association, The College Board, and ACTFL. He also served as president of the National Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations.
Dr. Rubio's research interests lie in the fields of applied linguistics and teaching methodologies, with a focus on technology-enhanced language learning and teaching. He is the author of two textbooks, Tercer Milenio (Kendall-Hunt, 2009) and Juntos (Cengage, 2018). Additionally, he has co-edited the volume Hybrid Language Teaching and Learning: Exploring Theoretical, Pedagogical and Curricular Issues (Heinle, 2012) and co-authored Creating Effective Blended Language Learning Courses: A Research-Based Guide from Planning to Evaluation (Cambridge UP, 2020), which was honored with the 2019-2020 MLA Mildenberger Prize.

This event will be held in person in G25 Stimson and will also be streamed live over Zoom (registration required). Join us at the LRC or on Zoom.

The event is free and open to the public.

Last Public Issues Forum

This film series has been created to celebrate the new minor in Caribbean Studies. It invites viewers to reflect on the Caribbean as a space of media creation, as well as to consider social issues of global concern from the perspective of the Caribbean. With films from Colombia, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic, this series aims to consider different parts of the Caribbean, allowing for a reflection on how the region is affected by geopolitics at a global scale, national politics, and by social issues including race, gender, sexual orientation and class. It also insists on and highlights the possibility and the power in narrating and creating from the margins, emphasizing the Caribbean not only as a subject matter but also and especially as agent and creator of languages, worlds, and ways of resistance.

These films are part of the LACS UISFL grant, funded by the Department of Education.

The schedule would be as follows:

Monday, September 15 at 6pm - Memorias del subdesarrollo (Tomás Gutiérrez, Cuba, 1968) Monday, September 22 at 6pm - Cocote (Nelson Arias de los Santos, 2017, Dominican Republic) Monday, September 29 at 6pm - La estrategia del mero (Edgar de Luque Jácome, 2022, Colombia)

Speaker: Eno Pei-Jean Chen (Associate Professor, Taiwanese Literature at the National Chengchi University)

Description:

This talk speaks to the existing scholarship on "Cultural Cold War" and "Affective Turn" in gender/East Asian Studies, explores the dynamics of intra-East Asian literary contact nebulae. Building on the research approach conducted in my resent monograph Cold War Feelings (2024), this talk will first theorize affect/feeling/emotion as method and historicize it as research subject, for the better understanding of the post-war Taiwanese and South Korean societies, with the issues of the (re)construction of female subjects and Cold War ideology. Furthermore, this talk will demonstrate the historical specificity of 3 kinds of emotion--happiness, shame, and melancholia--and their intersectionality with each other, and the female subjects. Finally, I propose to analyze the historical impact in an intersectional manner in Taiwan and South Korea, with the transnational approach of inter-referencing Taiwan and Korea. My research shows that a broad archive of texts that have mediated the entanglement between East Asian societies, however, were routed through and interrupted by imaginative geographies incommensurate with the nation-state. This approach expects to explore the articulation of the specificities of the Taiwanese and Korean socio-historical situation, and to contrast it against the existing geopolitical referencing systems, as well as the division of gender and feelings.

Speaker's Bio:

Eno Pei Jean Chen is Associate Professor of Taiwanese Literature at the National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan. She received her PhD degree from the Dept. of Asian Studies, Cornell University in May 2016. She is the author of Cultural Politics of Love: Colonial Genealogy of Modern Intimate Relationships in Taiwan and Korea (2023) and Cold War Feelings: Politics of Gender and Affect in 1950-1980s’ Taiwan and South Korea (2024). Her current research projects focus on the Cold War genealogy of feminism, and the archival nature of queer cultural history in Taiwan and South Korea.

This lecture is sponsored by a grant from the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York and co-organized by the East Asia Program and the Department of Asian Studies.

Speaker: Wah Guan LIM Associate Professor of Transcultural Theatre National Chung Hsing University

Description:

The 1980s was a most important decade for global Chinese theatre. In large part prompted by changes in regional geopolitics, the search for a local identity peaked among the Chinese communities in East and Southeast Asia. This period coincided with the rise of the professional careers of four important diasporic director-playwrights—Gao Xingjian 高行健 (b. 1940), Danny Yung Ning Tsun 榮念曾 (b. 1943), Stan Lai Sheng-chuan 賴聲川 (b. 1954), and Kuo Pao Kun 郭寶崑 (1939–2002)—whose efforts shaped the contemporary Chinese-language theater scenes across China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore. While the geopolitical conditions of the Cold War imposed ethno-nationalist identities across the region, in contrast, these dramatists weaved together native, foreign, and Chinese elements in their theater praxis to give voice to the local. At the same time, by performing cultural identities alternative to the ones sanctioned by their own states, they also debunked the notion of a unified “Chineseness.” My talk highlights the key role theater and performance played in suturing identity in the diaspora and circulating people and ideas across geographical space, well before cross-strait relations were yet to thaw.

Speaker's Bio:

LIM Wah Guan (BA Hons 1 UNSW, MSt Oxford, MA Princeton, PhD Cornell) is Associate Professor of Transcultural Chinese Theatre at National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan. His research interests span Chinese-language drama, cinema, and literature. His first monograph Denationalizing Identities: The Politics of Performance in the Chinese Diaspora (Cornell University Press, 2024) examines the role theatre and performance have played in identity formation in Chinese communities across East and Southeast Asia. Most recently the recipient of the Yushan Fellowship for Early Career Academics, he was the sole awardee in the Arts and Humanities category this year in Taiwan Ministry of Education’s effort to attract outstanding academics globally to strengthen the international standing of higher education in the country. He served previously as Assistant Professor at Bard College in New York and the University of New South Wales, Sydney, where he was Lecturer in Chinese Studies in the School of Humanities and Languages, and Fellow of New College.

To join virtually: https://cornell.zoom.us/j/92307207515?pwd=i3NiMc9IAzZN981x5PZnp4cqnM9GQ…

This lecture is sponsored by a grant from the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York and co-organized by the East Asia Program and the Department of Asian Studies.

Global Research Fellows are a new interdisciplinary research and professional development community at the Einaudi Center for advanced graduate students, Cornell postdocs, and visiting and local scholars. You'll find a community of fellow researchers with regional and international interests and a desire to foster a more equitable world.

Eligible students:
• Have completed at least two years of graduate education
• Engaged in research on a topic of global or regional studies significance
• Hold a strong desire to impact global challenges and create real-world solutions
• Interested in engaging and collaborating with other researchers

Can’t attend? Contact programs@einaudi.cornell.edu.

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The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies hosts info sessions for graduate and for undergraduate students to learn more about funding opportunities, international travel, research, and internships. View the full calendar of fall semester sessions.

Climate change deteriorates habitability. How will people respond who inhabit the affected spaces? (Im-)Mobility is one of the most prominently debated behavioral responses. Importantly, there is little scientific support for the claim that environmental deterioration by itself results in international mass migration. There is, however, good evidence that migrants are vulnerable to climate change impacts during their journeys. This paper explores the extent to which the notion of future, inevitable large-scale, climate-driven, South-North migration prevails in official positions – despite these nuanced findings. To this end, the paper takes stock of how national governments frame these futures in their national security strategies. The paper discusses framing differences between countries that typically receive migrants and those that are typically countries of origin. Governments, particularly from the Global North, frame migration often as an inevitable function of climate change. They do refer to migrants not as victims of this breakdown of sustainability or as protagonists of adaptation – but as the drivers of breakdown of peace in destination countries. In closing, the paper points to framings that are more aligned with the state of scientific research and that are more conducive to a sustainable, peaceful response to potential climate-related displacements. More generally, the observed framing of climate-related mobility is a textbook case for counterproductive framings of climate-related insecurities. If not well aligned with research, such framings risk justifying unsustainable policies that prioritize reactive means and the securitization of national space over ambitious climate policies that aim for long-term human security and sustainability. About the speaker Dr. Anselm Vogler is a Non-Resident Fellow at IFSH since February 2024. Until recently, he was Postdoctoral Researcher at Harvard University, Cambridge, USA and, prior to that, at the Department of Geography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 2024 he successfully defended his dissertation on climate security policies. From April 2020 until January 2024, he was research associate at IFSH and worked in the DFG cluster of excellency Climate, Climatic Change, and Society (CLICCS) at University Hamburg. Anselm Vogler studied political science in Dresden and New York. He was awarded an International Recognition for his dissertation by the Hans Günter Brauch foundation as well as the Viktor Klemperer Medal for distinguished success during studies and an award at the Beijing-Humboldt Forum. Host Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, part of the Einaudi Center for International Studies Register for the virtual talk here: https://cornell.zoom.us/meeting/register/9scDvJ8BTNqY2h1Z4_o2Vg.

Talk by Jason Cons (Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin)

Delta Futures explores the competing visions of the future that are crowding into the Bengal Delta’s imperiled present and vying for control of its ecologically vulnerable terrain. In Bangladesh’s southwest, development programs that imagine the delta as a security threat unfold on the same ground as initiatives that frame the delta as a conservation zone and as projects that see its rivers and ports as engines for industrial growth. This talk, and the book upon which it is based, explores how these competing futures are being brought to life: how they are experienced, understood, and contested by those who live and work in the delta, and the entanglements they engender—between dredgers and embankments, tigers and tiger prawns, fishermen and forest bandits. These future visions produce the delta as a “climate frontier,” a zone where opportunity, expropriation, and risk in the present are increasingly framed in relation to disparate visions of the delta’s climate-affected future.

Jason Cons is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Delta Futures (University of California Press, 2025) and Sensitive Space (University of Washington Press, 2016). He is the co-editor of Frontier Assemblages (Wiley) and is a member of the Limn editorial collective and an outgoing editor of South Asia: The Journal of South Asian Studies.

This presentation is supported by a grant from the Central New York Humanities Corridor