Institute for European Studies
Who Gets the Remainder? The Ethics and Politics of Gleaning

November 5, 2022
12:00 am
AD White House
With this workshop, we focus on gleaning: the widely practiced but long under-theorized right of the poor to take harvest remainders. More than simply the action of destitute people scavenging food, gleaning has been explicitly codified as entitlement and obligation: Leviticus not only entitles the poor to glean after the reapers, but obligates field owners to “not reap to the edge” of their fields, to leave for “the poor and the foreign.” Positing the right of the excluded in terms of the leftover, gleaning is fundamentally feudal: it premises aegis and common provision on the basis of changeless inequality; it formulates welfare in terms of an “excess” that must not be recirculated back into homogenous surplus value. Taking this feudal category as a lens onto our late-liberal world, this workshop asks how gleaning persists today. We invite economic and cultural anthropologists, legal scholars, theologians, historians and activists to discuss such well documented practices as scavenging, moonlighting, hacking, pilfering and coin-shaving with attention to that which is claimed as the leftover. Ultimately, we ask: how do people lay claim to aegis, social provision and their right to a commons today, through and despite liberal idioms of civic equality, lawfulness and smooth circulation?
Featuring papers by Amiel Bize, David Boarder Giles, Daniel Caner, Xenia Cherkaev, Catherine Fennell, Vinay Gidwani, Cristiano Lanzano, Peter Linebaugh, Tamta Khalvashi, Lori Khatchadourian, Gustav Peebles, and Bettina Stoetzer
As well as presentations on enclosure and access in publishing with Eileen Frandenburg Joy of Punctum Books and Ramsey Kanaan of PM Press.
Workshop schedule: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SbIMOAlnzK_qeAkpCHdmpU01U3eNI9jk/ed…
Events sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the Anthropology Department, and co-sponsored by the Society for the Humanities, the Department of Comparative Literature, the Department of History, and the Institute for European Studies.
Additional Information
Program
Institute for European Studies
"Gleaning for Communism" Book Talk by Xenia Cherkaev

November 3, 2022
4:30 pm
McGraw Hall, 215
Xenia Cherkaev will speak about her forthcoming book Gleaning for Communism: The Soviet Socialist Household in Theory and Practice (Cornell UP 2023). The book tells a radically new story of how the Soviet system functioned and why it failed. Mediating between today’s popular narratives of “Soviet times” and the ownership categories of Soviet civil law, it shows the Soviet Union as an explicitly illiberal modern project, reliant in theory and fact on collectivist ethics. A historical ethnography, its narrative begins in the 2010s with former Leningrad residents’ stories of gleaning industrial scrap from worksites. Placing these stories in conversation with Soviet legal theories of property and with economic, political and social history, this book shows the Soviet Union as a “socialist household economy,” whose members were guaranteed “personal” rights to a commons of socialist property rather than private possessions. It traces the development of such “personal” rights though three historically significant turns – during the 1930s, 1960s and 1980s – and shows how the Soviet project unfolded in dialogue with contemporaneous neoliberal thought in one overarching debate about the possibility of a collectivist modern life.
Event co-sponsored by the Department of Anthropology, Department of Comparative Literature, Department of History, and the Institute for European Studies
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Program
Institute for European Studies
Centrism From the French Revolution to Today

November 29, 2022
5:15 pm
Uris Hall, G08
Memorably born during debates about what to do with the King, the left/right divide was not the only opposition, nor indeed the most dominant, available at the time. The Terror, for instance, opposed the Mountain to the Plane or the Marais: the Mountain was composed of radical Jacobin deputies who dominated the Committee of Public Safety – most famously Robespierre – who sat across the highest benches of the Assembly, whereas the Plain or the Marsh sat on the lower benches, closer to the tribune. What consequences for our understanding of history and contemporary politics of seeing political dynamics not through a left/right divide but a centre/extremes one?
Speaker
Hugo Drochon, University of Nottingham
Register for virtual viewing.
This event is hosted by the Institute for European Studies. It is co-sponsored by French Studies, History, and Government.
Additional Information
Program
Institute for European Studies
Global Grand Challenges Symposium: Frontiers and the Future

November 17, 2022
8:00 am
How will we meet the most pressing demands of our time?
Join us for a two-day symposium that brings together the Cornell community and international partners to discuss the most urgent challenges around the world and how we can work together to address them.
Building on the first Global Grand Challenge, Migrations, symposium participants will help identify the next university-wide research, teaching, and engagement initiative to harness Cornell's global expertise.
The symposium, hosted by Global Cornell, will focus on five interdisciplinary themes, with panelists bringing their research and perspectives to bear:
Knowledge | Water | Health | Space | International Collaboration
Register today!
If you can't attend in person, please join us virtually:
Day 1: Wednesday, Nov. 16Day 2: Thursday, Nov. 17
Wednesday, November 16
Welcome: President Martha Pollack
Panel 1: Knowledge: What Counts, for Whom, and to What Ends?
4:30–6:00 ET, Klarman Hall, Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium
A panel of Cornell faculty and Global Hubs partners discuss innovations in higher education, social media, and legal frameworks; new forms of knowledge production and inequalities in access; and security, privacy, disinformation, and the role of knowledge in democracies.
Read about the panelists.
Remarks, Provost Michael Kotlikoff
Reception, 6:00 ET, Klarman Hall Atrium
Thursday, November 17
8:00–5:00 ET, Clark Hall, room 700 (7th floor)
Breakfast, 8:00 ET
Panel 2: Water: Worldwide Challenges and Approaches
9:00–10:30 ET
Faculty from Cornell and partner universities explore the most critical challenges related to changing global water conditions, including access to clean drinking water; water governance, norms, and customs; trade-offs between drinking water, irrigation, and hydropower; rising sea levels and water-dependent communities; and new solutions for wastewater, ocean plastics, and pollution.
Read about the panelists.
Panel 3: Health: An Integrated Global Perspective
11:00–12:30 ET
Faculty from Cornell and partner universities explore vital issues related to health, including equity, nutrition, mental health and well-being, disease, communication, new technologies, sociocultural norms, One Health, sustainable agriculture and ecosystems, elder care, and the business of medicine/health.
Read about the panelists.
Lunch, 12:30 ET
Panel 4: Space: In a Galaxy Not So Far Away
1:30–3:00 ET
Faculty from Cornell and partner universities explore urgent topics related to our global engagements with outer space, including intergovernmental collaboration and defining a new space policy; private space travel and exploration; historical lessons for colonization; new technologies, materials, and visualizations; intelligent life; resources and extraglobal markets; and access and inequalities.
Read about the panelists.
Panel 5: International Collaboration:< /b>Taking Action for Our Global Future
3:30–5:00 ET
In this final session, panelists discuss opportunities and challenges for creating truly collaborative and mutually beneficial partnerships in an unequal world. Faculty from partner universities share ideas for collaborating on the four themes introduced earlier in the symposium, and participants explore the tension between respect for local cultures and universalisms implicated in scientific inquiry.
Read about the panelists.
Register in-person or virtually for one or all sessions!
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies
Comparative Muslim Societies Program
East Asia Program
Southeast Asia Program
Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Institute for African Development
Institute for European Studies
South Asia Program
President of Iceland: Can Small States Make a Difference?

November 10, 2022
4:30 pm
Klarman Hall, Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium
With a population of 376,000—less than half the size of Cyprus—and land area of 40,000 square miles (103,000 square km), lceland is one of Europe's smallest states.
In his lecture "Can Small States Make a Difference? The Case of Iceland on the International Scene," President of Iceland Guðni Th. Jóhannesson shares his perspective as the leader of a small country that was a founding member of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
According to the Institute for Economics and Peace's Global Peace Index, Iceland is the world's most peaceful nation—for the 14th consecutive year. Iceland has consistently held the top position since the index launched in 2008.
Jóhannesson argues that Iceland's national commitment to peace; disarmament, arms control, and nonproliferation; and the shared values of the NATO alliance, including respect for democracy and human rights, are part of how his small state makes an outsized impact on international relations.
Hosted by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, this Distinguished Speakers series event is part of Einaudi's work on Democratic Threats and Resilience.
The event will be moderated by Peter Katzenstein, the Einaudi's Center Walter S. Carpenter Jr. Professor of International Studies and Professor of Government in the College of Arts and Sciences.
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Livestream
Don't miss this important lecture!
Join the livestream.Or view the event as it happens on the large screen in the Groos Family Atrium in Klarman Hall.***
In-Person: SOLD OUT
Please bring your Eventbrite ticket to the lecture. Doors open at 4:05pm.
Note: Due to security precautions, attendees may be searched, and bags will not be allowed in the auditorium. Free and secure bag storage will be available at the venue.
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About the Speaker
Guðni Th. Jóhannesson took office as Iceland's president in 2016. Previously, he was professor of history at the University of Iceland. He also taught at Reykjavik University, Bifröst University, and the University of London.
Jóhannesson has written numerous books on modern Icelandic history—including works about the Cod Wars, the Icelandic presidency, late Prime Minister Gunnar Thoroddsen, spying in Iceland, and the 2008 banking collapse—as well as dozens of scholarly articles and newspaper articles. In 2017 he was awarded an honorary degree by Queen Mary University of London, where he earned his PhD in history in 2003.
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Institute for European Studies
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies
Heritage Forensics and the Silent Erasure of the Armenian Past

November 2, 2022
12:00 pm
Uris Hall, G08
Open to the Cornell community.
In 1997, Azerbaijan launched a state program of cultural erasure that resulted in the destruction of nearly every vestige of the medieval and early modern Armenian past in the exclave of Nakhchivan. In a year-long forensic investigation, Caucasus Heritage Watch (CHW), a collaboration between researchers at Cornell and Purdue universities, conducted a detailed forensic analysis to systematically document the disappearance of over a hundred Armenian heritage sites. The resulting report bears witness to a new form of heritage crime and supports legal efforts to hold perpetrators accountable. CHW’s work poses new questions in heritage studies: What is the role of the researcher in documenting crimes? How can scholars create evidence that can be used in a court of law in struggles against racial discrimination? This presentation will provide an overview of CHW’s work to document silent erasure in Azerbaijan and address the challenges and stakes of archaeology in the maelstrom of politics and conflict.
Speakers
Lori Khatchadourian, Near Eastern Studies
Adam Smith, Anthropology
Presented by Critical Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Studies. Co-sponsored by the Institute for European Studies, Near Eastern Studies, Anthropology, the Cornell Institute of Archaeology and Material Studies, and the Armenian Students Organization.
Register for virtual viewing.
Additional Information
Program
Institute for European Studies
The European History Colloquium: Christina Kiaer

October 21, 2022
12:25 pm
McGraw Hall, Room 366
Christina Kiaer of Northwestern University will speak on Racial Solidarity at the Kyiv Film Festival: Black Skin, 1931. Request a copy of the paper: cf476@cornell.edu
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Institute for European Studies
Einaudi Welcome Reception

150 Guests Celebrated Einaudi's Impact
The Einaudi Center's annual reception on October 3 connected faculty, staff, campus leaders, and friends from across Cornell.
The Einaudi Center welcomed 150 guests to Uris Hall Terrace for a fall gathering celebrating Einaudi's vibrant intellectual community. The well-attended event brought together affiliated faculty and faculty new this year to Cornell in numbers not seen since 2019. Their research interests and expertise span the globe. Learn more about Einaudi's regional and thematic programs and initiatives.
The attendees enjoyed a sunny afternoon with a playlist of world music from Einaudi's own Daniel Bass, South Asia Program manager and Monsoon Radio DJ.
“The Einaudi Center's transnational perspective, the diversity and depth of our faculty expertise, and the range of our partnerships drive innovative collaborations and let us see new solutions.”
Einaudi Center director Rachel Beatty Riedl kicked off the event with remarks highlighting the center's core commitments: collaborations that advance knowledge, advocacy and thought leadership to inform global publics, and teaching and learning that open doors to new worlds.
Riedl highlighted a range of ways for faculty to get involved, including applying for Global Public Voices (due October 13) and exploratory seed grants with Cornell Global Hubs partners (due October 21).
She invited attendees to join Einaudi, the Cornell community, and representatives from Global Hubs around the world at the Global Grand Challenges Symposium: Frontiers and the Future on November 16–17. Register for the symposium.
Additional Information
From David's Harp to Tum Balalayka: Jewish Strings in Russian Song

November 3, 2022
4:30 pm
Anabel Taylor Hall, 203, Auditorium
On November 3 scholar and singer-songwriter Psoy Korolenko will present a lecture-concert that combines discussion of Jewish musical tradition in cross-cultural context of the 19-21st centuries and artistic performance.
Pavel Lion, PhD in Philology, MSU, more known by his art name Psoy Korolenko, is a singer-songwriter, translator, scholar, and journalist, often referred to as a ''wandering scholar'' and an ''avant-bard''. His multilingual one-person cabaret balances various genres and traditions, among which East European music, Klezmer, and Yiddish play a significant role. On stage since 2000, he released several books of essays, poetry, and song lyrics, and more than 20 CDs, solo or in collaboration with active Jewish and Klezmer musicians ("Opa!", Daniel Kahn, Igor Krutogolov, "Oy Division", Michael Alpert, Bob Cohen, Jake Shulmann-Ment). Featured in movies "Soul Exodus" (Hungary), "The Wandering Muse" (Canada), several Russian films (sometimes in cameo episodes). He has been a part of various international music projects, such as “Brothers Nazaroff'' (Smithsonian Folkways Records, 2015), ''Defesa'' (2015, tribute to Brazilian Tropicalists) and other. In 2020, ''Psoetry'' was published, a bilingual selection of Psoy's original Russian songs in English translations by other authors, and songs by Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Daniel Kahn and other artists, translated into Russian by Psoy.
One of his most recent achievements is his participation in ''Yiddish Glory'', a long-term collaborative project with the historian Anna Shternshis, professor of Toronto University. Yiddish Glory is an academic and artistic exploration of long-lost and recently discovered trove of Yiddish songs in Yiddish created and performed by a group of amateur singers and musicians from Ukraine evacuated to Middle Asia at the time of WWII. The album "Yiddish Glory" (2019) won “The Fiddler on the Roof” award from the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia and had been nominated for a Grammy award. Psoy is a voting member of the American Recording Academy, one of the organizers or the Russian American open-air music festival JetLAG, and participant of multiple klezmer music festivals. He had been artist/scholar-in-residence at the Trinity College (Hartford), University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), Dickinson College (Carlisle, PA), and he currently is a visiting lecturer at Dartmouth College.
Event sponsored by Jewish Studies Program, Department of Comparative Literature/Russian Program, Institute for European Studies, and Department of Music
Additional Information
Program
Institute for European Studies
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Russia’s Mobilization Won’t Fix Its Military Problems

Bryn Rosenfeld, IES
Though Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has said that the mobilization will be limited and gradual, “already there appears to be a disconnect between how it was described by Putin and Shoigu in their announcements of the policy and how it is being carried out,” Bryn Rosenfeld, a professor of government at Cornell University, told Vox via email.