The Migration Studies minor is a university-wide, interdisciplinary undergraduate minor that prepares students to understand the historical and contemporary contexts and factors that drive international migration and shape migrant experiences around the globe. This minor draws on the rich course offerings found across the humanities and social sciences at Cornell, and is designed to draw students outside of their major fields and to extend their knowledge beyond a single country.

Contact: migration-minor@einaudi.cornell.edu, https://einaudi.cornell.edu/migration-studies-minor

The Einaudi Center International Research Travel Grants provide travel support for Cornell graduate students conducting short-term research and/or fieldwork outside the United States. They also provide travel support for professional students engaged in various academic experiences in the international arena.

Contact: einaudi_center@einaudi.cornell.edu; https://einaudi.cornell.edu/funding/travel-grants

In Kenya there exist a chain of women educators in religious knowledge amongst the Muslim community. Due to their level of Islamic knowledge, their instructional role has for a long time been restricted to the traditional chuo (Quranic schools) to teach the reading and memorization of the Quran to children. This demonstrates the extent to which Muslim women were denied opportunities to pursue higher Islamic learning beyond the “necessary” basics. Even reputable early Muslim scholars in Kenya, like Sheikh Al-Amin Ali Mazrui (d. 1947) and Sheikh Sayyid Ali Badawi (d. 1963) did not make efforts to recruit and encourage women to advance their knowledge in Islamic education. Despite to the initial setback, presently there is a section of Muslim women who have successfully advanced their religious training through various initiatives. Owing to their advanced education, these women have assumed different roles in disseminating the religious knowledge to the Muslim community in the country.

African Islamic modernity is a discourse, a historical condition, and a project that highlights the entanglements of African racial identities, Islamic forms of life, and modernity as the globally hegemonic mode of social, economic, and political being. While there are many lineages by which one might trace the story of entanglement — situated differently in various locations, traditions, and contexts — the contemporary nation-state of Senegal is the ideal setting to think through these relationships. It is a space marked by a millennium of Islamic presence and over five centuries of integration in the global economy sequentially defined by the trans-Atlantic slave-trade, colonization, and neoliberal economic structural adjustment. It is also a space in which conflicting Africanist and Orientalist discourses have competed to represent a society that consistently escapes both constructions. Between and beyond these discourses, there is an important national discourse that narrates a story of modernity in three key episodes: 1) Islamic revolution that enshrines Islamic principles of governance, 2) anti-colonial messianism that carves out an autonomous space of Islamic economics, and 3) Racial accommodation in which the colonial state and Sufi orders negotiate the terms of the social contract. In this talk, I will show how these episodes together constitute a history of the present.

"Guangzhou Dream Factory" Film discussion (participants watch the film on their own) with filmmakers Christiane Badgley and Erica Markus. Watch a film trailer here: https://vimeo.com/197863673

Featuring a dynamic cast of men and women from Cameroon, Kenya, Nigeria and, Uganda, Guangzhou Dream Factory is a provocative story of immigration, globalization, and the pursuit of “Made in China” African dreams.

Immigration, globalization, Chinese factories, and African dreams… Guangzhou Dream Factory weaves stories of Africans chasing alluring, yet elusive, “Made in China” dreams into a provocative critique of 21st-century global capitalism.
Guangzhou, a.k.a. Canton, is southern China's booming commercial center. A mecca of mass consumption, the city’s vast international trading centers attract more than half a million Africans each year. Most are doing business – in China to buy goods they’ll sell back in Africa. But some choose to stay, and for these Africans, China looks like the new land of opportunity, a place where anything is possible. But is it?

Discussants:

Tristan Ivory, Assistant Professor at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR);Tao Leigh Goffe, Assistant Professor at Africana Studies and Research Center and Program in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.This event is hosted by the East Asia Program Graduate Student Steering Committee (GSSC) and co-hosted by the Afro-Asia Group. Kun Huang, a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature, and GSSC officer will moderate.

Cornell Cinema also co-sponsors this event as part of their Migrations Stories film series in conjunction with Global Cornell's Global Grand Challenges Migrations Initiative.

How to view the film:

Cornell students, faculty, and staff and those with library access to Kanopy may view the film here: https://cornell.kanopy.com/video/guangzhou-dream-factory.

A time-limited screening link will be made available one week in advance to other community members who have registered for the event.

All participants need to register to receive the Zoom link for the discussion with the filmmakers.

Issues in African Development Special Topic Seminar Series (CRP 4770/6770) - Fall 2020 Theme: Environment, Sustainability and Health Challenges in Africa: Managing Human-Nature Interactions. Issues in African Development Seminar Series examines critical concerns in contemporary Africa using a different theme each semester. The seminars provide a forum for participants to explore alternative perspectives and exchange ideas. They are also a focal activity for students and faculty interested in African development. In addition, prepares students for higher level courses on African economic, social and political development. The presentations are designed for students who are interested in development, Africa’s place in global studies, want to know about the peoples, cultures and societies that call Africa home, and explore development theories and alternate viewpoints on development.

In Genetic Afterlives: Black Jewish Indigeneity in South Africa, Noah Tamarkin considers new ways to think about belonging that can acknowledge the importance of historical and sacred ties to land without valorizing autochthony, borders, or other technologies of exclusion.

Tamarkin will join a panel of anthropology professors from around the country to discuss his recently published book, which analyzes the Lemba people of South Africa and illustrates how they have given their own meanings to the results of DNA tests and employed them to manage competing claims of Jewish ethnic and religious identity, African indigeneity, and South African citizenship.

Noah Tamarkin, Author of Genetic Afterlives, Cornell UniversityYulia Egorova, Durham UniversityJonathan Marks, UNC CharlotteKaren-Sue Taussig, University of MinnesotaRayna Rapp, New York UniversityCasey Golomski, University of New HampshireJ. Lorand Matory, Duke UniversityKimberly Arkin, Boston UniversityJonathan Boyarin, Cornell UniversityModerator: Juno Parreñas, Cornell UniversityThis talk is part of Reimagining Citizenship, a speaker series by Cornell Migrations.

Co-sponsored by the Cornell Departments of Anthropology and Science & Technology Studies, Africana Studies & Research Center. Hosted by eCornell.

Issues in African Development Special Topic Seminar Series (CRP 4770/6770) - Fall 2020 Theme: Environment, Sustainability and Health Challenges in Africa: Managing Human-Nature Interactions. Issues in African Development Seminar Series examines critical concerns in contemporary Africa using a different theme each semester. The seminars provide a forum for participants to explore alternative perspectives and exchange ideas. They are also a focal activity for students and faculty interested in African development. In addition, prepares students for higher level courses on African economic, social and political development. The presentations are designed for students who are interested in development, Africa’s place in global studies, want to know about the peoples, cultures and societies that call Africa home, and explore development theories and alternate viewpoints on development.