“Exile,” wrote Edward Said, “is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home.”

Join Oleksandra Shtepenko, an exiled Ukrainian scholar, Cornell virtual scholar under threat, and visiting professor at the Nicolaus Copernicus University (NCU) in Poland, for a roundtable discussion of her first-hand experiences as the war in her homeland continues. Along with her NCU collaborators Anna Skubaczewska-Pniewska and Iwona Rzepnikowska, she will address these and other crucial questions: How can we rebuild lives, both in the flesh and of the mind, when war rips open new, unhealable borders? Can intellectual work be reimagined under these circumstances, together with institutions and communities that challenge existing paradigms?

The roundtable will be moderated by Anindita Banerjee (Comparative Literature), Shtepenko's Cornell host and virtual collaborator.

Respondents will include Cristina Florea (History, Cornell) and Zenon Wasyliw (History, Ithaca College).

About the Speakers

Oleksandra Shtepenko is an Institute of International Education scholar, Cornell Virtual Scholar Under Threat, and visiting professor at the Nicolaus Copernicus University (NCU) in Poland. Iwona Rzepnikowska is an associate professor of literary studies at the Nicolaus Copernicus University (NCU) in Poland.Anna Skubaczewska-Pniewska is an associate professor of literary studies at the Nicolaus Copernicus University (NCU) in Poland.

Hosts and Sponsors

This event is hosted by the Department of Comparative Literature and Global Cornell.

A Book Talk with Anna Schwenck

Flexible Authoritarianism challenges the notion that authoritarianism's transnational rise constitutes a backlash against economic globalization. Describing a governmental approach that simultaneously incentivizes a can-do spirit and suppresses dissent, the book points out resonances between authoritarian and neoliberal ideologies in today's comeback of strongman rule. Drawing on field observations, in-depth interviews, and analyses of video clips, it conveys the look and feel of flexible authoritarianism in Russia through the eyes of up-and-coming youth. The author analyzes ways in which the insignia of cool start-up capitalism and familiar cultural forms such as the summer camp help stabilize the regime, while also showing how up-and-coming youth both embrace and contest loyalty to the government.

Anna Schwenck’s research lies at the intersection of cultural and political sociology. She is particularly interested in how cultural understandings, be they transnational or locally specific, shape political behaviour. She studied the resonances between authoritarianism and neoliberalism in Russia, pandemic and science skepticism in German-speaking countries, and processes of re-traditionalization in popular music cultures. Her recent work investigates the role of liberation songs and narratives in conventional and contentious politics in South Africa.

Anna is employed at the University of Siegen’s department of social sciences and the Siegen-based collaborative research centre “Transformations of the Popular” (SFB 1472). She is also a visiting researcher at the University of the Western Cape’s Anthropology Department in South Africa.
She earned a PhD in Sociology and an MA in Social Sciences from Humboldt University Berlin, as well as a BA in Cultural Studies from Viadrina European University, Frankfurt (Oder). She was a visiting student/scholar at University College London's School of Slavonic and East European Studies, the Sociology Department at the University of California (Berkeley), and the Russian State University for the Humanities (Moscow).

This lecture examines how the concept of vulnerability is “translated” from legal bureaucratic discourses into actual policy and practice in the refugee resettlement context. In particular, we trace how the integration potential of refugees continues to be weighed against their vulnerabilities in the process. While resettlement is a voluntary commitment and not legally binding, states that have signed the 1951 Geneva Convention have agreed to share the responsibility of providing protection and solutions for refugees who cannot return to their country of origin. Through a comparative discussion of refugee resettlement in Canada and Norway, we shed light on some mechanisms through which the humanitarian focus on prioritizing the most vulnerable comes under pressure from competing political considerations and rationales. By examining instances of what we call the political or ‘tactical’ uses of resettlement, we aim not only to highlight its partisan and domestic political dynamics but also to open up questions of who is ultimately left behind and considered ‘too vulnerable’ for resettlement.

Dagmar Soennecken is an Associate Professor in the School of Public Policy & Administration at York University (Toronto, Canada). She is also cross-appointed to the Law & Society Program there. Her research focuses on comparative public policy in the EU and North America. She is particularly interested in questions concerning law and the courts as well as citizenship and migration, including refugees. In 2019, she became the Editor-in-Chief of Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees. Her work has been published in Comparative Migration Studies, Law & Policy, Droit et Société, Politics and Governance among others. She was one of the three Canadian co-investigators on the recently concluded VULNER project team.

Hosted by the Institute for European Studies and cosponsored by the Migrations Program, part of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, and funded by the Mellon Foundation's Just Futures Initiative.

Join us October 3–5, 2024 for a three-day conference featuring distinguished Cornell faculty and prominent economists and scholars from around the world.

View and download the conference program.

The World at a Turning Point: Cornell Conference on Development Economics and Law will be an important stocktaking of the state of the global economy, with a special focus on the changing nature of labor markets, technological progress, inequality, climate change, and related laws and regulations. Speakers will highlight both empirical and theoretical research.

Cornell faculty, students, and staff are welcome to attend sessions of interest. Registration is not required for this in-person conference.

***

About the Event

A collaboration between CRADLE, a research group in the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, and the Department of Economics in the College of Arts and Sciences, CRADLE's annual conference offers a multifaceted perspective that spans economics, law, politics, and policy.