Join us for some arroz con leche and conchas on the house to celebrate the beginning of the spring semester

Please register via Campus Groups: https://cglink.me/2ee/r1956225

OPEN TO THE CORNELL COMMUNITY!

The story of TodoSomos, two years on the Venezuelan Colombian border, rigorously documenting the humanitarian crisis through the collection of first-person narrative and how we created an archive of the story that is undeniable and inconvenient to those responsible for the crisis.

TodoSomos on the Colombian Border

TodoSomos is a US-based nonprofit specializing in collecting, analyzing, and sharing narratives of those afflicted by humanitarian crises. Collecting testimony in a rigorous ongoing way provides an undeniable record of what a refugee population has been through over time. Why they left, what they faced on their journey, their fears, and their hopes for the future. Our work is that of sociologists and anthropologists, only in conflict and unstable areas requiring both nimbleness and academic rigor. We sample broadly over a long period and with the open-ended question, “tell us your story.” The story you would share with your best friend, grandfather, or sister. Why did you leave? What happened along the way? Where will you go? What are your hopes and fears?
From the fall of 2019 through the spring of 2022, in 26 legal ledgers, we collected over 2,000 handwritten testimonies. On a monthly basis, we used local community to read through and summarize the narratives. From these narratives, we produced a quarterly report for the United Nations, National and International NGOs, and local governments involved in the immediate response. We will make our greater archive available to academic institutions as they review, reflect, and publish on this critical moment in global history.

About the Speaker

Douglas Lyon is a family physician and epidemiologist with more than 25 years spent working in Oregon and Internationally with Doctors without Borders, the US Centers for Disease Control, and the UN High Commission for Refugees. His work in the US has primarily cared for the underserved in county and migrant health clinics. His international work has been in various positions as a clinician, medical advisor, and country director, principally in complex emergencies and the management of epidemics – HIV/AID, Cholera, Ebola, and COVID-19.

He is the founder of an NGO called TodoSomos, which collects first-person narratives of Venezuelan refugees in Colombia and South America - TodoSomos hopes to bring global attention to the hardship and cause of the displacement of the more than 5 million that have left their country over the last three years.

His favorite quote is from Mahatma Gandhi, ‘The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.’

********

Cosponsored by the Department of Roman Studies

This is an in-person event, however, if you can't make it, join us by registering through the Zoom link below:

https://cornell.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_CWI6Hqd-QvO0LpkJTBZ5LQ

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Current calls to decolonize global research renew the institutional and personal scrutiny of our “best practices” in conducting field research. Beyond formal adherence to the Belmont principles of “respect, beneficence, and justice,” researchers must reexamine some of the hidden (and not so hidden) costs borne by the local community in the research effort. Panelists will discuss ethical considerations of international research and ethnography in a variety of methodological practices: randomized control trials, focus group discussions, essay competitions, and selective summer camps.

Moderator

Rachel Beatty Riedl (Government, A&S; Einaudi Center)Panelists

Arnab Basu (Dyson School)Alex Nading (Anthropology, A&S)Sarah Thompson (South Asia Program, Einaudi Center)***

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)

What do you do when the site where you planned to do your research has a major disruption making your research infeasible? What do you do when a loved one gets sick and you need to find more time for caregiving in the last semester of your program? What do you do when you get a job—a year earlier than you anticipated—and you need to finish quickly? Have a Plan B! Come hear from current and former PhD students who have had to make changes in plans, how they negotiated the process with their committee, and where they are today.

Moderator

Mildred Warner (City and Regional Planning, AAP)Panelists

Gloria Blaise (Natural Resources and the Environment, CALS)Michael Cary (Global Development, CALS)George Homsy (Binghamton University)Adam (Chuling) Huang (International and Comparative Labor, ILR)***

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)Best Practices and Challenges in International Field Research (Tuesday, March 14, 4:30 pm – 6:00 pm, Uris Hall G08)Beyond the IRB: Ethics and International Research (Wednesday, March 29, 4:30 pm – 6:00 pm, Uris Hall G08)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)

Black History Month is a time to assess, ask questions, and come together. Join us for this town hall and community event hosted by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies to kick off Black History Month on campus and discuss the encounter between African Americans and Black people outside the United States.

To be Black is to be part of a community that has multiple identities and nationalities. Our encounters and experiences show historical, political, and cultural solidarities but, at the same time, capture tensions among ways of being Black.

At this event, faculty, staff, and students will gather to ask the questions: What does Blackness here at Cornell mean? Who defines it? What do Black people owe each other? What of each other’s histories do we know and should know? And what should be done?

Stay after the town hall to enjoy time with friends, refreshments, and music from DJs Ishion Hutchinson and Esther Kondo Heller.

***

Free Ticket Required

Limited seating: Reserve your free ticket today!

Please note that this is an in-person community event. The discussion will not be recorded or livestreamed.

***

Schedule

Town Hall: 6:00–7:30 p.m.Food and Music: 7:30–9:00 p.m.Faculty Speakers

Mukoma Wa Ngugi (Literatures in English, Africana Studies and Research Center, A&S)Carole Boyce Davies (Africana Studies and Research Center, Literatures in English, A&S)Russell Rickford (History, A&S)Ishion Hutchinson (Literatures in English, A&S)Michell Chresfield (Africana Studies and Research Center, A&S)Grant Farred (Africana Studies and Research Center, A&S)Derrick Spires (Literatures in English, A&S)Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon (Literatures in English, A&S)Misha Inniss-Thompson (Psychology, A&S)Student Speakers

Harmela Anteneh '23 | Alana Berry '24 | Obioha Chijioke '24 | Esther Kondo Heller, MFA candidate | Setor Kudiabor '25 | Maia Lee ' 24 | Rumbidzai Mangwende '23 | Amira Olingou '25 | Imani Rezaka '24 | Brice Roundtree '24 | Ami Tamakloe, PhD student | Amandla Thomas-Johnson, PhD student | Selam Woldai '23 | Members of Black Students United and the Caribbean Students' Association

Host and Sponsors

Hosted by the Einaudi Center as part of its inequalities, identities, and justice global research priority, this event is cosponsored by the Africana Studies and Research Center in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Borderlands, migrations, and movement are prevalent themes in post-secondary education. They connect students to seemingly disparate experiences in an increasingly inter-connected world. How do we engage with these topics to teach effectively about diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice? In this workshop, we combine the expertise of faculty across disciplines and area studies to share ideas and resources with one another.

This online workshop is sponsored by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, with funding support from the U.S. Department of Education Title VI NRC Program.

Speakers:

Nicole Childrose (History, Columbia-Green Community College)

Debra Castillo (Latina/o Studies, Cornell)

Tristan Ivory (sub-Saharan Africa/Sociology, Cornell)

Natasha Raheja (South Asia/Anthropology, Cornell)

LACS Weekly Seminar

Readings from: Azares del cuerpo (2017) and Solo un poco aquí (2023) And a conversation with author María Ospina. Colombian writer and critic María Ospina will share excerpts from her two works of fiction, Azares del cuerpo (2017) and Solo un poco aquí (2023), followed by a Q & A.

About the Author

María Ospina is an Associate Professor of Latin American culture at the Department of Romance Languages and the Latin American Studies Program at Wesleyan University.

Publications

She is the author of the book El rompecabezas de la memoria: Literatura, cine y testimonio de fin de siglo en Colombia and has written numerous articles on nature, violence, and culture in contemporary Colombia. Her first book of fiction, the short story collection Azares del cuerpo (2017), has been published in Colombia, Chile, Spain, and Italy and was recently translated into English (Variations on the Body, Coffee House Press, 2021). Her novel Solo un poco aquí will be published by Random House Mondadori in April 2023.

LACS Weekly Seminar

This talk explores the practical negotiations, discursive contests, and social aspirations surrounding print over a century of political transformation, from the late colonial era to the Mexican Revolution. Centering on the diverse communities that worked behind the scenes at urban presses, the talk considers how printer interactions with state and religious authorities shaped broader debates about press freedom and authorship, identifying printing shops as unexplored spaces of democratic practice where the boundaries between manual and intellectual labor blurred.

About the Speaker

Corinna Zeltsman is an assistant professor of history at Princeton University. She is the author of Ink under the Fingernails: Printing Politics in Nineteenth-Century Mexico (the University of California Press, 2021), which received the Howard F. Cline Book Prize in Mexican History from the Latin American Studies Association. Trained as a letterpress printer, she is a senior fellow in the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography at the Rare Book School.

LACS Weekly Seminar

The environmental crisis accentuates inequality. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the most vulnerable populations often reside in informal, precarious, or popular settlements, which are more exposed to climate events and generally have less access to infrastructure and ecosystem services. In recent years, designers and urbanists have offered important insights into rethinking informal settlements and developing strategies to improve their inhabitants' quality of life, safety, and opportunities. Today, it is essential to incorporate climate criteria into urban interventions effectively. The presentation will focus on the potential of landscape design and public space as media to restore and improve, adapt and connect, and mitigate and anticipate the transformation of the most vulnerable settlements in the Americas.

About the Speaker

Jeannette Sordi is an architect and urban planner based in New York City. She currently teaches at the New York Institute of Technology and collaborates with the Inter-American Development Bank in Latin America and the Caribbean. Until 2018 she was an Associate Professor of Landscape and Urbanism at Adolfo Ibañez University in Santiago de Chile. She holds a Ph.D. in urban planning and design from the University of Genoa (2014) and was a Ph.D. Visiting Student at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (2011- 2012). Her Ph.D. focused on the genealogy of landscape urbanism and was published as Beyond Urbanism (List, 2014; Sacabana, 2017, Spanish edition). She co-founded Landscape as Urbanism in the Americas in 2015 and was one of the curators of the Chilean XX Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism in Valparaiso in 2017.

Publications

Her main publications include the books Andrea Branzi. From Radical Design to Post-Environmentalism (ARQ, 2015), The Camp and the City. Territories of Extraction (List, 2017), Part-time Cities (ARQ, 2019), Ness.doc.2 Landscape as Urbanism in the Americas (Lots, 2020, co-edited with F. Rodriguez and P. Peralta) and Ecological Design. Strategies for the Vulnerable City (IaDB, 2021, 2022, with F. Vera).

*********

Presented by the Latin American and Caribbean Studies program and cosponsored by the Department of Landscape Architecture.