Talk by Pinky Hota (Anthropology, Smith College)

The Violence of Recognition explores the roots of ethnonationalism conflict between two historically marginalized groups—the Kandha, who are Adivasi (tribal people considered indigenous in India), and the Pana, a community of Christian Dalits (previously referred to as “untouchables”). Hota documents how Hindutva mobilization led to large-scale violence, culminating in attacks against many thousands of Pana Dalits in the district of Kandhamal in 2008. Bringing Indigenous studies as well as race and ethnic studies into conversation with Dalit studies, Hota shows that, despite attempts to frame these ethnonationalist tensions as an Indigenous population’s resistance against disenfranchisement, Kandha hostility against the Pana must be understood as anti-Christian, anti-Dalit violence animated by racial capitalism. Hota’s analysis of caste in relation to race and religion details how Hindu nationalists exploit the singular and exclusionary legal recognition of Adivasis and the putatively liberatory, anti-capitalist discourse of indigeneity in order to justify continued oppression of Dalits—particularly those such as the Pana. By showing how indigeneity works as a political technology that reproduces the political, economic, and cultural exclusion of landless marginalized groups such as Dalits, The Violence of Recognition reveals the violent implications of minority recognition in creating and maintaining hierarchies of racial capitalism.

Pinky Hota is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Smith College, with affiliations with the Program for the Study of Women and Gender and South Asian Studies. Her research has been funded by the Wenner-Gren and Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundations, and published in Modern Asian Studies, Anthropological Quarterly, and Political and Legal Anthropology Review. Her research interests lie in caste and race, religion, technology and capital, and extractive economies. The Violence of Recognition, published by University of Pennsylvania Press in 2023, is her first book.

Talk by Sohini Chattopadhyay (History, Union College)

In May 1939, a 20-year-old man died in Bombay’s suburb of Vile Parle. He was a migrant worker, often without a home, and Dalit. His friends took his body to a cremation ground, but only by trespassing it at night since Dalits were not allowed access to the cremation ground that offered traditional funerals for dominant caste Hindus. Seemingly unconnected, the same year, the Bombay Legislative Council introduced a proposal to have a public electric crematorium in the city, which would be accessible to all. This paper links incidents of civil disobedience, such as the one in Vile Parle, to the political and social forces behind the establishment of Bombay’s first public electric crematorium. By analyzing these acts of resistance within the broader context of labor and anti-caste movements and a simultaneous comfort with new death technologies, the paper illuminates the complex interplay between public health infrastructure, colonial governance, and the struggle for social justice. The electric crematorium, as a response to these tensions, emerges as both a symbol of technological progress and a tool for social equality, highlighting the intertwined histories of caste, technology, and urban development in colonial Bombay.

Sohini Chattopadhyay (she/her) is currently an Assistant Professor of History at Union College. Her current book project, tentatively titled "Dead Labor: Comparative Histories of the Electric Crematorium in Colonial Bombay and Calcutta", tracks the intersections between technologies and social histories to underscore the connected and divergent patterns of urbanization in South Asia. Alongside courses in South Asian history and history of science, Sohini has also designed team-taught courses with the engineering school as part of the Science and Technology Studies Program. She received a PhD in History from Columbia University in 2023 and also holds an MA from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India. Sohini is also invested in public history. She was the founding editor of the web journal Borderlines and is now developing its advisory board. She frequently contributes articles on public health, social policies, and South Asian history on Indian digital media platforms.

Talk by William Lodge, II (Public Policy, Cornell University)

This presentation delves into the intersectional and syndemic barriers affecting HIV care among transgender women and Hijras (TGW) in India. Drawing on findings from a multi-method study conducted in Mumbai and New Delhi, the talk illustrates how compounded multilevel barriers—including mental health conditions, intersecting forms of stigma, and economic marginalization—impede effective HIV care for TGW. Utilizing quantitative and qualitative insights, the presentation sheds light on how these challenges intersect and magnify each other, further hindering ART adherence and viral suppression. The presentation aims to contribute to a body of knowledge that informs policy and promotes a responsive and inclusive HIV care model tailored to TGW in India.

William Lodge II is an assistant professor at the Cornell Brooks School of Public Policy and a National Institutes of Health (NIH) FIRST Faculty Fellow. A behavioral and social scientist, Dr. Lodge is dedicated to advancing health equity and improving HIV prevention and care among gender and sexual minorities in the U.S. and globally. Dr. Lodge’s research integrates syndemic theory and intersectionality to understand and address multilevel barriers in HIV prevention and care by focusing on how social and structural determinants—such as stigma and discriminatory policies—shape health outcomes, particularly emphasizing marginalized communities in India and the U.S.

IES Graduate Fellows will be presenting their work in conference style presentations followed by time for discussions. Presenters will be:

Panel 1

Alican Taylan- Architecture Art Planning- "Disentangling Modernity and Colonialism: The St. Joseph Mission School in Ngasobil, Senegal"

Victoria Pihl Sørensen- Performing and Media Arts- "Making “Moral Mothers” and “Better Babies”: Reckoning with Eugenics in the History of Reproduction in Denmark"

Maria Luisa Palumbo- Architecture Art Planning- "Histories of Land, Grain, and Architecture Across Italy and Libya, 1912-1943"

Panel 2

Nora Siena- Romance Studies- "Inside/Outside: Primo Levi’s Liminal Relationship with Jewishness as a Source for Critique"

Rachel Horner- Music- "Remapping València in the Festival Borderlands"

Matt Finck- History- "The Cosmologies of Victor Serge: Science and Catastrophe in the Revolutionary Novel"

In this event, we will be officially launching the archive Todosomos, a collection of handwritten testimonies by Venezuelan migrants who crossed the border from Venezuela to Colombia between 2019 and 2021. The event will have several panels and include interventions by the founders of Todosomos, the library team in charge of the processing and transcription of the archive, Venezuelan artists and writers, a representative of the NGO Ithaca Welcomes Refugees, and a talk by Professor Zeb Tortorici (NYU). It will also include a lunch, a reception, and a pop-up exhibit of the handwritten notebooks. This event is free and open to the public.

View the event program

The recent U.S. election is likely to have significant impacts on immigration policy and practices. Based on experience with the previous Trump administration and standing efforts among Republicans in Congress, these changes may impact Cornell students, staff, and faculty. Join Cornell’s Migrations Program in a conversation about the current state of immigration policy.

This is a virtual-only meeting open to Cornell faculty, staff, and students. Registration is required.

Panelists

Shannon Gleeson, School of Industrial and Labor Relations and Brooks School of Public PolicyLaura Taylor, Director of International ServicesStephen Yale-Loehr, Cornell Law SchoolModerator

Wendy Wolford, Vice Provost for International Affairs and Robert A. and Ruth E. Polson Professor of Global Development in the College of Agriculture and Life SciencesHost and Sponsors

The Migrations Program, part of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, builds upon the work of Migrations: A Global Grand Challenge to inform real-world policies and outcomes for populations that migrate.

Rukundo Kambarami Benedict is a highly experienced nutrition researcher currently serving as the Lead Nutrition Research Associate at The Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) Program since August 2017. In this role, Rukundo analyzes national datasets and authors reports to guide nutrition policy and programs. Prior to this, Rukundo was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Cornell University, where research focused on breastfeeding practices in South Asia and the quality of maternal nutrition counseling. Rukundo's academic journey includes a PhD from Cornell University, where teaching and research on nutrition and health were key components, and a Master of Science in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University. Early experiences included a role as a Research Assistant for a WHO/Johns Hopkins collaboration and various research positions at the Zvitambo Institute, further emphasizing Rukundo's dedication to advancing nutrition and public health interventions.

Public Registration

IES Luigi Einaudi Distinguished Lecture
Building on her recent book Seeing Others, on her recent work on the urban/rural divide across EU countries, and on the non-college educated young workers (18-30) in Manchester New Hampshire, and Manchester UK, Michèle Lamont discusses the challenges of addressing recognition gaps in the US and Europe at a time when attacks against various minoritized groups are multiplying. She also presents analytical tools and strategies for dealing with the current political backlash against inclusion.

Michèle Lamont is Professor of Sociology and of African and African American Studies and the Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies at Harvard University. Born in 1957, she grew up in Quebec and studied political theory at the University of Ottawa before obtaining a doctorate in sociology at the University of Paris in 1983. After completing post-doctoral research at Stanford University, she has served on the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin (1985-87), Princeton University (1987-2002) and Harvard University (2003-present). A cultural and comparative sociologist who studies inclusion and inequality, she has researched how we evaluate social worth across societies, the role of cultural processes in fostering inequality, symbolic and social boundaries, and the evaluation of knowledge, as well as topics such as dignity, stigma, racism, class cultures, collective well-being, social resilience, and social change. Her books include Money, Morals and Manners: the Culture of the French and the American Upper-Middle Class (1992), The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Race, Class, and Immigration(2000), How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgement (2009), Getting Respect: Responding to Stigma and Discrimination in the Us, Brazil and Israel (coauthored, 2016), and Seeing Others: How Recognition Works and How It Can Heal a Divided World (2023). She is also the author of several collective works, and over a hundred articles published in American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Annual Review of Sociology, Human Nature Behavior, and other prominent outlets.

Regions of the world are historical constructions yet over time they have seemed to become more and more fixed. This talk will cut across linguistic and cultural boundaries and re-examine conceptualizations of regions in the Americas and the wider Atlantic World, showing evidence for a very polyglot, cross-imperial and interconnected Greater Southern Caribbean during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The second half of the eighteenth century saw the growth of the Windward Islands, the southern Dutch Antilles and the southern rimland. These developments, together with the continued importance of well-established Barbados, make it possible to conceive of a new zone of interaction, encompassing Venezuela and its offshore islands, the Guianas, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Lesser Antillean chain from Dominica to the Grenadines. Historians continue to reconsider the boundaries of the Caribbean, resulting in a shifting understanding of traditional regions in the Americas. They now increasingly focus on the relationships between the islands and territories of North, Central and South America that touch the Caribbean Sea.

This talk will explore the strong connections from most of the Lesser Antilles to the Spanish mainland and the Guianas. Furthermore, it will claim that the Southern Caribbean had special importance in the context of the Atlantic World since it helped to connect the North and South Atlantic. Southern Caribbean colonies were a source of news about events on the South American continent especially during the Spanish American War of Independence. Economic, political, scientific, and even missionary networks also consolidated across the sub-region and helped to forge new bonds across the North and South Atlantic. Ultimately, the Revolutionary Greater Southern Caribbean provides a good case to reconsider how regions are constructed and how they change over time.

Dexnell Peters is currently Lecturer in Caribbean and Atlantic History at the University of the West Indies, Mona campus. He was previously a Teaching Fellow at the University of Warwick and Supernumerary Fellow and Bennett Boskey Fellow in Atlantic History at Exeter College, University of Oxford. Dexnell has a PhD in Atlantic History from Johns Hopkins University. He is broadly interested in the history of the Greater Caribbean and the Atlantic World. Dexnell's current research project, through the main themes of geography and the environment, inter-imperial transitions, migration, the plantation economy, politics and religion, makes a case for the rise of a Greater Southern Caribbean region (inclusive of Venezuela and the Guianas) in the late eighteenth century, showing evidence for a very polyglot, cross-imperial and interconnected world. His first book, written in collaboration with historian Shane Pantin at the University of the West Indies (UWI) St. Augustine, focused on the history of the campus’ Guild of Students in commemoration of the organization’s fiftieth anniversary and covered key issues of student movements, decolonization and post-independence in the former British Caribbean colony of Trinidad & Tobago.

The global history of the interrelationship between race, migration, and real estate is still in its infancy, even as it promises a particularly rewarding angle on histories of how mobility and inequality have been intertwined. The Argentine capital of Buenos Aires, which during the second half of the nineteenth century received large numbers of European immigrants and underwent spectacular urban transformations, offers a window onto these problems. In recent decades, historians have increasingly viewed this migration through the lens of Argentine elites’ discourses of “whitening,” but they have rarely examined the concrete urban effects that European immigration had for the city’s Afro-descendants, who in the 1830s still constituted more than a quarter of the population. This talk attempts to do as much by looking at the formation of a Black neighborhood through real estate acquisition as well as the ensuing process of dispossession. While the empirical focus is micro-historical, the explanatory horizon is broader: The paper ultimately seeks to derive more general findings about the history of capitalism and inequality in the nineteenth-century Atlantic.

Michael Goebel is the Einstein Professor of Global History at Freie Universität Berlin and co-director of the university’s Center for French Studies. Since his Ph.D. (University College London, 2006) he has also worked at the European University Institute, Harvard University, and the Geneva Graduate Institute. Following his 2015 book Anti-Imperial Metropolis, which won the Jerry Bentley Prize in World History, he has increasingly grown interested in the emerging field of global urban history. He is currently the Principal Investigator of the SNSF-funded project Patchwork Cities, which explores the history of segregation in port cities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

On Monday, April 9, Michael Goebel will be giving another lecture, "Contagion, Inevitability, and Teleology: Imperial Disintegration and Nation-State Formation in Global History."

Co-Sponsored by the Department of Government, Department of History, Institute for Comparative Modernities, and Institute for European Studies.