"Fail Better: Learning to Participate in Another Culture"
Mari Noda
Professor Emeritus in Japanese, The Ohio State University

Learning a language is like learning to play a new game. Since the rules of the game are determined by the culture, players new to the culture will experience failures. These failures are both inevitable and frequent. Their consequences could be serious, too. Yet the game is thrilling enough to keep players at it, and through playing, the players who keep at it improve on their scores. The improved scores entice players to take more risks. Pedagogical materials offer ways for both language learners and their teachers to continuously improve their level of performance in the language game.

I will discuss the role of pedagogical materials in the language game of participating in another culture. In doing so, I hope to address questions such as the following: What can we expect to see in well-designed pedagogical materials? What can we expect to experience with well-designed pedagogical materials? What can we do to learn to participate in another culture with the help of well-designed pedagogical materials? What can we do to ameliorate shortcomings of pedagogical materials?

Bio: A specialist in East Asian language pedagogy, Mari Noda is primarily interested in curriculum, material development, and assessment. She directs SPEAC (Summer Programs East Asian Concentration), which currently offers intensive Japanese and Chinese language programs. She is a lead producer of the NihionGO NOW! series (2021, Routledge), a new beginning-to-intermediate-level learning material, and the Japanese Sills Test (JSKIT), a low-stake online assessment tool. She is also a co-author of Japanese: The Written Language (2006 and 2018, Yale University) and “Remembering the future: Compiling knowledge of another culture” (with Galal Walker, 2010, National East Asian Language Resource Center at The Ohio State University). She serves on the Board of Directors of Japan-America Society of Central Ohio. At OSU, she serves as the faculty advisor for the Nihongo Osyaberi-kai (Japanese Conversation Club).

This event will be held in person in G25 Stimson and will also be streamed live over Zoom (registration required). Join us at the LRC or on Zoom.

The event is free and open to the public. Campus visitors and members of the public must adhere to Cornell's public health requirements for events.

Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program (LACS) Public Issues Forum.

In 1979, the Caribbean island of Grenada became the first and so far only nation in the history of the English-speaking world to declare itself revolutionary, oust its elected government, and adopt socialist approaches. Visits from Brazilian educationalist Paulo Freire, African-American activist Angela Davis, Kenyan novelist Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, and support from the then Cuban government, signalled that this was not just a "small island" affair but a major international one, reverberating throughout Latin America and the African Diaspora.

On the 40th anniversary of the revolution's 1983 collapse and the US invasion that swiftly followed, the distinguished Grenadian novelist Merle Collins reflects on how the revolution encouraged participants like herself to think in global terms and how it influenced her own life and writing. The talk comes as she publishes her latest novel, Ocean Stirrings, about Louise Langdon, the Grenadian activist who was also the mother of Malcolm X.

Merle Collins is Professor Emerita, University of Maryland, where she taught for several years in the Department of English and the Comparative Literature Program. During the period of the Grenada Revolution, she served as a coordinator for research on Latin America and the Caribbean for the Government of Grenada. She left Grenada in 1983. The author of three novels, a collection of short stories and three collections of poetry, she also served as Director of University of Maryland's Latin American Studies Center (now Latin American and Caribbean Studies Center).

A Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program (LACS) Public Issues Forum funded by the US Department of Education's Title VI UISFL grant, co-sponsored by English Literatures Department, Society for the Humanities, and the American Studies Program.

Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program (LACS) Seminar Series, Co-sponsored by: City and Regional Planning (CRP) and the Cornell Center for Health Equity (CCHEq).

A discussion with three Puerto Rican community leaders from Caño Martín Peña CLT, Taller Salud and La Colmena Cimarrona who will be speaking about strategies of resistance, community solidarities and emancipatory processes to advance collective land ownership and land-based repair mechanisms that improve access to housing, built environment, environment, food security, and climate adaptation; ultimately contributing to achieving health justice. Land is at the root of structural inequities. It is also the basis for community sovereignty, justice and healing. Within a Puerto Rican context, community land claims acquire particular relevance due to the continuous exposure to climate injustices, the lack of adequate investment for basic infrastructure on the island and structural power inequities.

Register Here

Featured Speakers:

Iván Duque Former President of Colombia (2018-2022) Colombia
Heather Henyon Founding Partner Mindshift Capital, UAE
Andrew Karolyi Charles Field Knight Dean and Harold Bierman Jr Distinguished Professor of Management Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, USA
Mark Mobius Founding Partner Mobius Capital Partners, UAE
Juan Pablo Ortega Co-founder and CEO Yuno, Puerto Rico
Shaanti Shamdasani CEO & Founder S. ASEAN International Advocacy & Consultancy - SAIAC, Indonesia
Vera Songwe Chair and Founder Liquidity and Sustainability Facility, Africa
Marcos Troyjo Transformational Leadership Fellow University of Oxford
Edward Tse Founder and Chairman Gao Feng Advisory Company, China

The Cornell Emerging Market Institute Conference is the United States’ leading annual forum for discussing the ongoing trends and phenomena in our world’s rapidly growing emerging markets. Bringing together heads of the world’s largest multilateral institutions and preeminent business, the conference fosters engaging discussions on economic development and this year, specifically, through the lens of global supply chains.

The Conference is hosted at Cornell’s landmark Cornell Tech campus on Roosevelt Island in New York City and will feature a variety of key-note speakers, thought-provoking panel discussions, networking sessions, and two sponsored competitions: the Cornell EMI Mark Mobius Pitch Competition and the Cornell EMI Corning Case Competition. The Conference also marks the launch of the Institute’s Annual Report, a collection of research and articles from the past year developed by researchers within Cornell as well as the Emerging Multinationals Research Network in collaboration with OECD Development Center, UNCTAD, IFC, and Inter-American Development Bank.

This year’s conference is centered around the compelling theme Risks and Realignments:

Emerging markets are in flux—no longer the future, already central to the present. And yet Capital is flowing as if there is doubt, with new partnerships dawning, old questions lingering. The EMI Conference straddles the crossroads, here to capture a seminal moment, when crises — even the specters of financial contagion — may not have to threaten us, so much as invite us to think anew. This Conference reaffirms our commitment to building bridges, as risks spill over, as potential realignments draw closer. The conference will hold 4 panels, the Cañizares Award ceremony, and the competition finals:

Central Bank Digital Currencies: Looking Back and Looking ForwardReorganizing investments in Emerging MarketsRealignments: Multilaterals and Sovereign Wealth FundsLaunch of the EMI Report 2023Cornell EMI Corning Case CompetitionCornell EMI Mark Mobius Pitch CompetitionJoin us.

Cornell University’s Emerging Market Institute is holding its annual conference on November 3rd at Cornell Tech on Roosevelt Island, NYC.

The Emerging Markets Institute holds an Annual Conference every first Friday of November, in which Emerging Markets are brought to the forefront of discussion. Within the conference, EMI also holds the finals of the and the . Stay connected to the EMI Conference website to find more about the speakers and agenda, and follow our newsletter.

An Environmental and Technological History of Cold War Mega-Projects in Latin America

Weaponizing Geography demonstrates the consequences of unbuilt mega-projects. Sebastian Diaz Angel will discuss the untold story of how a series of high modernist Cold War projects came into being and what their proponents hoped to achieve, as well as the successes, failures, and consequences of their actions. It examines the so-called “South American Great Lakes System” (SAGLS), a geographical and environmental engineering project (1964-1973) proposed by the Hudson Institute of New York, a think tank related to the U.S. Department of Defense. With the support of influential Latin American elite members, engineers, and war strategists, this think tank sought to transform the major rivers of the continent into a series of massive interlocked, channelized, and navigable artificial reservoirs. Much like the North American Great Lakes, these waterways would provide (in theory) inexpensive riverine transportation, inexhaustible sources of hydropower, and a landscape facilitating large-scale agroindustry, mining, and counterinsurgency operations in allegedly “unexploited and unexplored” tropical regions.

Please join us for this virtual conversation. Register here.

About the speaker

Before starting his Ph.D. at Cornell’s History Department, Dr. Sebastian Diaz Angel had an M.A. in Geography, a B.A. in History, and a B.A. in Political Sciences. He worked as the Digital Map Curator at the National Library of Colombia, lectured at Externado University, and led Razón Cartográfica, an academic network promoting research on the history of geography and cartography in Colombia and Latin America. Sebastian specializes in maps studies and has a profound interest in environmental history, science and technology studies, geopolitics, public history, and the digital humanities.

Host

Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies