This panel is organized to bring together museum directors, curators, architects, and scholars to comment on the recent discussions on repatriation and restitution as a form of reparation to colonized and looted lands.

While museums in Europe and North America have occasionally returned objects to their native communities or lands of arrival, the issue of repatriation gained an accelerated epistemological and ethical momentum at the end of 2018. What is the responsibility of museums to objects taken into their collections by violence or deceit during the colonial times or wars? What is the role of museum-object-repatriation in the recognition of colonial and military violence? What are the procedural and ethical differences between repatriation, restitution, and other possible forms of reparations? What are the legal structures that prohibit or allow deaccession in the museums of different countries? Once the objects are parted from their communities and no longer serve their original sacred functions, where are they returned back to? What determines how far back museums consider repatriation claims legitimate and why? What is the future of “universal museums” around the world?

Speakers will each make a 15-minute presentation, commenting on the contemporary debates from the perspectives of their own work and study area. A question and answer session will follow the presentations.

Speakers:
Souleymane Bachir Diagne | Columbia University | New York
Jonathan Fine | Humboldt Forum | Berlin
Cecile Fromont | Yale University | New Haven

Moderator:
Esra Akcan | Cornell University | Ithaca

Over the past decade, democracy has been in retreat in a large number of countries in different regions, at least partially reversing the wave of democratization that swept across much of the world in the late 20th century. This webinar explores patterns of "democratic backsliding" in different world regions and their implications for democratic rule and its political resiliency in the face of autocratic challenges.

Panel: Valerie Bunce, Tom Pepinsky, Rachel Riedl, and Kenneth Roberts

Co-sponsored by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, Latin American Studies Program, Institute for African Development, Institute for European Studies, and Southeast Asia Program.

Please register through the following link:
https://cornell.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_PWKFidVjSgy3Pwxf7xmmXg

This panel is organized to bring together architects and planners to comment on the ongoing reconstructions in Beirut after the deadly explosion of August 4, 2020, by contextualizing it in the city’s urban development and the relatively recent urban reconstruction of its center after the civil war. How, when, and by whom should the reconstruction projects be designed and implemented? What are lessons learned from the reconstruction of the city center after the civil war? With the looming danger of opportunistic gentrification, how might the reconstruction process alter the area’s use and the lives and livelihoods of its residents? How may it affect Beirut’s place in the world cultural heritage and global imagination? How can international organizations and academic institutions partner with local organizations for the redesign/rebuilding of the destroyed neighborhoods? How should the different affected neighborhoods be approached when it comes to redesign/rebuilding?

Speakers

Elie Haddad | Lebanese American UniversityMona Harb | American University of BeirutModerator

Mostafa Minawi | Cornell University Panel Questions

Elie Boutros | Cornell AlumniDana Muhsen | Cornell AlumniThe panel is sponsored by the Institute for European Studies (IES) and the Ottoman & Turkish Studies Initiative (OTSI) of the Einaudi Center for International Studies at Cornell University. It is organized as part of the IES Migration Series for its AY 2020-21 theme Repair and Reparations. You may find information about the past events including their video recordings here: https://einaudi.cornell.edu/programs/institute-european-studies/events/…

For questions or accessibility accommodations, please contact Pamela Hampton ph55@cornell.edu

Studying the ties and practices that bind Tamils to the districts they inhabit or visit is essential to understand not the ways Tamils use and transform space in diaspora. The territorialization of Tamil identity, that is, their spatial extension and the continuation of their socio-cultural practices, is not always immediately visible in multi-ethnic cities in which Tamils are a minority. Tamils transform those spaces where they are dominant according to their own cultural and social practices and establish venues conducive to social interactions. Furthermore, the polarization of space and the dynamics of identity networks explains the various attitudes of Tamils towards the social frequentation of certain areas. Finally, the presence and role of places of sociability, such as religious, cultural or commercial establishments, are essential to understand Tamils’ relationship with locality and thus the reasons for which these districts are recognized -or not- as “Tamil” by Tamils themselves.

With specific examples drawn from fieldworks in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Paris, this paper will show that the affirmation of Tamil identity and the constitution of Tamil ‘ethnoterritories’ in certain areas is not only the outcome of Tamil action but also the consequence of state-sponsored urban planning policies, such as eradication of slums, gentrification and heritagization of specific zones, and the frequentation of these zones by non-Tamil migrants.

Delon Madavan was the Tamil Studies Visiting Scholar at Cornell's South Asia Program in Spring 2020. He completed his PhD in Geography at Paris-Sorbonne University (France) in 2013. He has taught at the Department of Geography at Sorbonne University and also gave lectures at the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations (INALCO) in Paris. Madavan is Researcher Fellow at the Centre of Studies and Researches on India, South Asia and its Diaspora (University of Québec à Montréal, Canada) and Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Centre of Studies and Researches on India and South Asia (CNRS-EHESS, France). In his research, he examines the articulation between migration, identity and space to analyze forms of integration of the Tamil populations in several cities (Jaffna, Colombo, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Paris & Montréal). Madavan is the author and co-author of several articles and books on Tamils in Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore and France.

Respondent:

Sharika Thiranagama is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University. Her research explores the intersection of political mobilization and domestic life, focusing on highly fraught contexts of violence, inequality, and intense political mobilization. Her major work has been on the Sri Lankan civil war and research with two different minority ethnic groups, Sri Lankan Tamils and Sri Lankan Muslims, exploring the ways in which militancy, political violence and large-scale displacement became folded into intergenerational transmissions of memory and ethnic identification. Most recently, in new fieldwork on Dalit communities in Kerala, South India, she examines how communist led political mobilization reconfigured older caste identities, re-entrenching caste inequities into new kinds of private neighborhood life. She focuses on the household as the prime site of the inheritance of work, stigma and servitude as well as the possibility of reproduction, dignity and social mobility. She is the author of In My Mother’s House: Civil War in Sri Lanka (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011).

The annual International Fair showcases Cornell's global opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students. Explore our virtual fair on September 8 and find out about international majors and minors, language study, fellowships, internships, study abroad, exchanges, service learning, and more.

The International Fair is sponsored by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, the Office of Global Learning (both part of Global Cornell), and Cornell's Language Resource Center. The Fair will be held as a virtual event via Zoom, with each virtual table set up as a Zoom meeting. Register now to receive an e-mail containing links/access information for all virtual tables. During the event, you will be able to come and go from each table at any point (to join a new table, close out of your current table and then click the link for the table you wish to join).

If you are not able to join the event synchronously, the confirmation e-mail will also contain contact information for all participating units. Video clips and other resources will be available after the fair.

International Fair participating units and schedule

This panel is organized to bring together scholars and analysts to comment on the recent conversion of the Hagia Sophia from a museum into a mosque from the perspective of architectural history in geopolitical context.

What is the building’s significance for Byzantine, early and late Ottoman, Republican and contemporary Turkish architecture? How will the Hagia Sophia’s conversion into a mosque in 2020 impact its use, global and local public meaning, place in the city and nearby monuments, physical attributes, Byzantine mosaics, Christian and Muslim symbols, marble floor, and acoustics, among other things? What effects did the building’s recent conversion make in different areas of historical studies? Are there comparable examples elsewhere in the world?

Speakers will make 8-minute presentations in the rough chronological order of their historical field of expertise and comment on the contemporary decision from the perspectives of their own scholarly work and study area. After a discussion where speakers respond to each other, the panel will conclude with a Q and A session.

Panelists in order of presentation:

Namık Erkal TED University in AnkaraBissera Pentcheva Stanford UniversityChristina Maranci Tufts UniversityMaria Georgopoulou American School of Classical Studies at AthensSevil Enginsoy Istanbul Bilgi UniversityÇiğdem Kafesçioğlu Boğaziçi UniversityBelgin Turan Middle East Technical UniversityPeter Christensen Co-Moderator, University of RochesterNikos Magouliotis ETH ZurichEsra Akcan Co-Moderator, Cornell UniversityMesut Dinler Politecnico di TorinoMücahit Bilici City University of New YorkBülent Batuman Bilkent UniversityThe panel is organized by the Institute for European Studies of Einaudi Center for International Studies at Cornell University. Funding is provided by the Central New York Humanities Corridor, as part of the multi-year event series "New Approaches to Scholarship and Pedagogy of Ottoman and Turkish Architecture" organized by Esra Akcan (Cornell University) and Peter Christensen (University of Rochester).