Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Decolonial Love: Learning to Redream Dangerously Again

May 14, 2023
11:00 am
Schwartz Center for Performing Arts, Film Forum
How might we learn to redream dangerously again?
Join us for a two-day symposium that brings together scholars, creative writers, and activists to discuss and envisage how the theories, practices, and visions of the roles of love, identity, and land are complexly intertwined with (trans)national structured challenges.
With a commitment to "learning to redream dangerously again" during a historical moment of an unceasing remonstration of the intersectional inequality and injustice entrenched in the United States and other localities, the 2023 cohort of the Einaudi Center's Global Racial Justice graduate fellows will host the "Decolonial Love" symposium. The symposium aims to reconstruct and reimagine the multifacetedness of individuals and the complexity of their ties with the self, others, and the natural world through the lens of coloniality and decoloniality.
Hosted by the Einaudi Center as part of its inequalities, identities, and justice global research priority, and co-sponsored by Migrations: A Global Grand Challenge, the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program, and the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research.
Reserve your seat today!
Saturday, May 13
Registration, 12:30 p.m. EDT
Opening Remarks, 1:00 p.m. - 1:15 p.m. EDT
Mohamed Abdou (Cornell University)Keynote Address, 1:15 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. EDT
Mariana Mora (Center for Research and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology), "Towards a politics of listening and sensorial truths, the struggle for racialized justice for the 43 disappeared students of Ayotzinapa, Mexico"Panel I - Identities, 2:45 p.m. - 4:15 p.m. EDT
Moderator: I-An "Amy" Su (Cornell University)
Alaina E. Roberts (University of Pittsburgh), "Is Black and Indigenous Reconciliation Possible?"María Elizabeth Rodríguez Beltran (Rutgers University), "Redefining Black Caribbeanness: Peripheral Relationships Decentering the Colonial Family"Michele Cheng (Cornell University), "The Aftermath of Colonization and Colonialism: Musical Identities of a 1.5 Generation Taiwanese American"Amber Starks, "The Disenfranchising of Black Indigeneity from Global Indigeneity"Alivia Moore (Cornell University), "Truth Bias and Intergroup Dynamics"Film Screenings and Discussions, 4:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m. EDT
Moderator: Chinasa T. Okolo (Cornell University)
1000 Gifts of Decolonial LoveEgúngún (Masquerade)Counterfeit KunkooCane/CainReception, 5:30 p.m. - 6:30 p.m. EDT
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Sunday, May 14
Registration and Lunch, 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. EDT
Poetry Reading and Color Therapy, 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. EDT
Moderator: Ariel Dela Cruz (Cornell University)
Billy-Ray Belcourt (University of British Columbia)Valeen JulesErica Violet LeePanel II - Solidarities of the Earth: Envisioning and Enacting Reparative Land Justice, 1:00 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. EDT
Moderator: Kendra Kintzi (Cornell University)
Enrique Salmón (Cal State East Bay), "We Still Need Rain Spirits: Cultivating Indigenous Land-based Relationships, Resilience, and Identity"Kristen Bos (University of Toronto), "Beads Land"shakara tyler (University of Michigan)Troy Richardson (Cornell University), "Land Labors: Smallest Gestures, Empirical Intimacies"Panel III - Decolonial Love, 2:45 p.m. - 4:15 p.m. EDT
Moderator: Karina Edouard (Cornell University)
Gina Goico (Cornell University), "Envisioning Possibilities: Naming and Archiving Memories of Love and Care from the Dominican Republic"Ariel Dela Cruz (Cornell University), "Don't You Remember?: Intergenerational Filipinx Care and Refusal"Erica Violet Lee, "Inner City Love Notes: On Street Graffit, Protest Art, and Other Signs of Blooming"Closing Remarks, 4:15 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. EDT
Mohamed Abdou (Cornell University)
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Southeast Asia Program
Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Eco-Innovation in Brazil and US

April 28, 2023
9:00 am
Tata Conference Center, Room 327
Register for free: https://johnson.campusgroups.com/EMI/rsvp_boot?id=2100902
Join us for our upcoming event: “Eco-Innovation in Brazil and US." The Cornell Emerging Markets Institute is partnering with the Brazilian National Confederation of Industry (CNI) and the Brazilian Student Association at Cornell (BRASA) to talk about industry cooperation in science, technology, and innovation. Our diverse panel of speakers includes researchers and industry leaders working in Brazil, the US, and the international community at broad.
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Dairy farming in Latin America: A story of growth, sustainability, and food security

May 3, 2023
12:25 pm
Stocking Hall, 201
In Latin America, dairy production faces serious challenges such as low-quality forage, diseases (infectious, metabolic, and parasitic), climate change, and insufficient access to technology, markets, infrastructure, and resources. Nevertheless, the dairy industry directly impacts the socioeconomic status of millions of families through its contribution to income, food security, and access to protein. A review of unique pasture-based dairy systems located mainly in lowlands (valleys and plains) and highlands (Andes Mountains) will provide context for a presentation of applied field research aiming to improve dairy cows’ health and quality of life for dairy farmers in Colombia.
About the Speaker
Dr. Francisco Leal Yepes is originally from Colombia, where he obtained his DVM degree. In 2011, he moved to Ithaca, NY, and worked as a research assistant for two years. Then, he started his Ph.D. in 2013 and a residency in Ambulatory and Production Medicine in 2016 at Cornell University. From 2018 until 2020, Franco was a Clinical Instructor in Ambulatory and Production Medicine at Cornell University. Franco started as an assistant professor of Agricultural Animal Production at the College of Veterinary Medicine, Washington State University, in October 2020. He provides dairy farms with advice on primary care and preventive medicine while teaching senior veterinary students.
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Panel on Indigenous-European Encounters in the Caribbean and Brazil

May 2, 2023
4:30 pm
Martha Van Rensselaer Hall, G155
A LACS 60th Anniversary Special Seminar
In this event, historians Tessa Murphy (Syracuse) and Heather Roller (Golgate) will join LACS director Ernesto Bassi in a conversation about Murphy’s and Roller’s recently published, award-winning books The Creole Archipelago: Race and Borders in the Colonial Caribbean (2021) and Contact Strategies: Histories of Native Autonomy in Brazil (2021).
Murphy and Roller will uncover the multiple ways indigenous people in the Lesser Antilles and Brazil encountered Europeans, expanding the universe of interactions beyond futile efforts of resisting European encroachment. Their books show how indigenous people in the eastern Caribbean and the Brazilian interior prevented Europeans from establishing sovereignty in what the Kalinagos, the Mura, and other indigenous groups considered their territories. Successfully deploying technology and diplomacy, strategically engaging in trade and warfare, and even developing alliances with other newcomers, were all part of the toolkit indigenous groups used to maintain their treasured autonomy.
The Creole Archipelago won the 2022 James A. Rawley Prize, granted by the American Historical Association, to recognize outstanding historical writing that explores aspects of integration of Atlantic worlds before the 20th century, as well as the 2022 FEEGI book prize, granted by the Forum on Early-Modern Empires and Global Interactions, for its groundbreaking examination of “islands beyond empires” and of local/creole and indigenous instrumentality in forging a Creole Archipelago.
Contact Strategies won the 2022 Friedrich Katz Prize, granted by the American Historical Association, to the best book published in English focusing on Latin America, including the Caribbean, as well as the 2022 Sérgio Buarque de Holanda Prize for the Best Book in Social Sciences, granted by the Brazil Section of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA).
Tessa Murphy, The Creole Archipelago: Race and Borders in the Colonial Caribbean (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021). An Associate Professor of History at Syracuse University. Her research and teaching interests lie in the history of the colonial Americas, broadly defined to include the Caribbean, Central, and South America, and what are now Canada and the United States.
Heather Roller, Contact Strategies: Histories of Native Autonomy in Brazil (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2021). A Professor of History and Environmental Studies at Colgate University, where she teaches courses on global environmental history, Brazil and Amazonia, and the histories of Indigenous peoples in the Americas. In addition to Contact Strategies, she is the author of Amazonian Routes: Indigenous Mobility and Colonial Communities in Northern Brazil.
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Here’s How Other Democracies Have Prosecuted Political Leaders

Gustavo Flores-Macias, LACS
Gustavo A. Flores-Macías, professor of government, discusses democracy in Brazil.
Additional Information
Panel: Nationalism Unsettled

April 28, 2023
3:00 pm
Uris Hall, G08
Nationalism Unsettled presents a critical exploration of national imaginaries that disturb, defy or deviate from mainstream nation-state narratives, demanding renewed consideration of the nature of nationalism. In tackling this subject, we bring to the table speakers with cross-disciplinary expertise, spanning history, sociology, geography and the arts, and consider case studies spanning the Caribbean of the late 18th century, China under Mao, and contemporary Venezuela and Russia. At a time when nationalism globally is being re-energized through shifting and newly affecting forms, we invite you to join us in taking a deep dive into this vital subject, harnessing the power of a comparative perspective.
Discussant: Begüm Adalet, Department of Government
Format: 10 minute talk by each panelist on their individual research topic, followed by a 20 minute talk by the discussant, and up to 60 minutes for responses to the discussant and Q&A.
Presentations:
Ernesto Bassi, Department of History: Economic proto-nationalism or creole patriotism? Eighteenth-century visions of prosperity and the broken promises of empire
Mara Yue Du, Department of History: What Was Loving China: Revolutionizing Patriotism under Mao
Irina R. Troconis, Department of Romance Studies: Nation, Unsettled: Translucency, Memory, and Materiality in the Venezuelan Diaspora
Leila Wilmers, Department of Sociology: The myth of national resilience and non-statist imaginaries of the Russian nation
Register for viewing on Zoom.
This event is hosted by the Institute for European Studies as part of the Einaudi Center's democratic threats and resilience research priority. It is co-sponsored by Latin American and Caribbean Studies and the East Asia Program.
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
East Asia Program
Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Institute for European Studies
Uprooting and Rerouting: Migration and Relation in Modern and Contemporary Theatre

April 25, 2023
5:00 pm
Uris Hall, G08
Migration has defined human activity for millennia, illustrated by the fact that it constitutes the basis of many foundational texts: the Sanskrit Ramayana, the Old Testament, Homer’s Odyssey, the Aeniad, Icelandic sagas. In Poetics of Relation (1990), Martinican philosopher and poet Édouard Glissant distinguishes between "root identity," and "relation identity." While root identity is founded on plantedness in the past, claims to legitimacy, and entitlement to the possession of land, relation identity places emphasis on contact and circulation between cultures: "network of relation." In her presentation, Finburgh Delijani will demonstrate the centrality to contemporary theatre of the theme of migration. Exiles, immigrants, and refugees featuring across the plays examined by Finburgh Delijani show how belonging, legitimacy, and identity are uprooted via the often violent severance of migration. Concurrently, they illustrate how the trauma that characters suffer – which cannot be underestimated – is counterbalanced by the relational, transnational, cosmopolitan citizens they are able to become. With particular emphasis on women characters, Finburgh Delijani demonstrates how Glissant's notion of relation enables an appreciation of how theatre is promoting an understanding of the twentieth- and twenty-first-century worlds of mass migration, as post-national, transnational and fluid.
Hosted by the Einaudi Center as part of its inequalities, identities, and justice and migrations global research priorities, this event is co-sponsored by Migrations: A Global Grand Challenge.
Speaker
Clare Finburgh Delijani (Goldsmiths, University of London) is the recipient of a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship (2023-26) and Professor in the Department of Theatre and Performance at Goldsmiths, University of London. She has edited many books and articles on theatre from the UK, France, and the French-speaking world. She is currently writing Spectres of Empire: Performing Coloniality in France (contracted with Liverpool University Press) on theatre that addresses France's colonial past, and postcolonial present.Moderator
Eleanor Paynter (Einaudi Center)Respondents
Sabine Haenni (Performing & Media Arts, A&S)Natalie Melas (Comparative Literature, A&S)Imane Terhmina (Romance Studies, A&S)
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Institute for European Studies
"Love Can Change the World"
Former Costa Rican President at Mar. 22 Bartels Lecture
Carlos Alvarado Quesada gave this year's Bartels lecture: "Good change is possible. Don’t let anyone tell you the contrary."
Additional Information
Religious Racism in Brazil: Candomblé as a Target of Neo-Pentecostals" by Mel Adún

March 31, 2023
12:25 pm
Mel Adún is a journalist, writer, and coordinator of Kilomba Collective.
This event will be in English.
Everybody is welcome!
Additional Information
Program
Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Grad Chats: Best Practices and Challenges in International Field Research (Rescheduled Event)

March 30, 2023
4:30 pm
Uris Hall, G-02
Conducting international fieldwork provides significant value for dissertation research in various disciplines. Panelists will share information, guidance, and lessons learned related to planning, preparing, and conducting fieldwork overseas. Topics include factors shaping field site location(s) and/or partner(s), handling the logistics of fieldwork, data accumulation and protection in varied contexts, models and practices of in situ collaborations, and planning for and getting acclimated to living and working in a new environment and culture.
Moderator
Chris Barrett (Dyson School)Panelists
Emily Dunlop (Government, A&S)Samantha Lee Huey (Nutritional Sciences, CHE)Stacey Langwick (Anthropology, A&S)***
Grad Chats: Conversations on International Research and Practice is a series hosted by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies to support graduate students with interdisciplinary training and planning around conducting international research.
Spring 2023 Schedule
From Plan A to Plan B: Designing Research for a Changing World (Thursday, February 16, 4:30 pm – 6:00 pm, Uris Hall G02)Beyond the IRB: Ethics and International Research (Wednesday, March 29, 4:30 pm – 6:00 pm, Uris Hall G08)Best Practices and Challenges in International Field Research (Thursday, March 30, 4:30 pm – 6:00 pm, Uris Hall G02)Finding a Research Focus through Creative Writing (Tuesday, April 18, 4:30 pm – 6:00 pm, Uris Hall G08)Travel Health and Safety Awareness for Conducting Research Abroad (Tuesday, May 9, 4:30 pm – 6:00 pm, Uris Hall G08)
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International 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