Poet Dmitry Bykov was nearly killed in a poisoning, then found himself banned from teaching at Russian universities. Essayist Pwaangulongii Dauod received death threats for writing about queer culture in his native Nigeria. Cartoonist Pedro X. Molina watched as Nicaraguan state forces jailed his colleagues and occupied the offices of the newspaper where he published his work. Novelist Anouar Rahmani was threatened with imprisonment for writing about human and environmental rights in Algeria.

All four were forced to flee their homelands, and all four were able to resume their creative work in “cities of asylum” in the United States.

“DISSIDENCE: Exiled Writers on Resistance and Risk” is supported by a grant from Cornell University’s Migrations Global Grand Challenge and the Mellon Foundation’s Just Futures Initiative. The event is also supported by CIVIC. The Migrations Initiative, part of Global Cornell, studies the movement of all living things through an interdisciplinary, multispecies lens, with a special focus on themes of racism, dispossession, and migration.

About the writers

Dmitry Bykov (Ithaca City of Asylum) is one of Russia’s best-known public intellectuals. He spent five days in a coma after falling ill during a speaking tour in 2019. An independent investigation blamed Russian security forces for poisoning him with the nerve agent Novichok. In addition to prohibiting him from teaching at the university level, the government has also barred him from appearing on state radio or TV. Bykov is currently a visiting critic at Cornell University and a fellow of the Open Society University Network.

Pwaangulongii Dauod (City of Asylum Detroit) is a novelist, essayist, and memoirist from Nigeria. His 2016 essay in Granta, “Africa’s Future Has No Space for Stupid Black Men,” sparked a national conversation about queer issues in Nigeria and provoked threats to his life. Woke Africa Magazine named him one of the “Best African Writers of the New Generation.” He is currently an Artist Protection Fund Fellow in residence at Wayne State University.

Pedro X. Molina (Ithaca City of Asylum) is a political cartoonist who fled Nicaragua during a crackdown on dissent in 2018. He was an International Writer in Residence at Ithaca College and was an Artist Protection Fund Fellow in residence at Cornell University. Among his many honors is a 2021 Gabo Award, a 2019 Maria Moors Cabot Award from Columbia Journalism School, and the 2018 Courage in Editorial Cartooning Award from Cartoonists Rights Network International.

Anouar Rahmani (City of Asylum Pittsburgh) is a novelist, journalist, and human rights defender from Algeria. He has faced legal harassment for his advocacy for individual freedom, environmental rights, and the rights of minorities, women, and LGBTQ+ people. In 2021, he was shortlisted for the Index on Censorship’s Freedom of Expression Awards. He is currently an Artist Protection Fund Fellow in residence at Carnegie Mellon University.

Each writer will present an 8-10 minute reading followed by a moderated Q&A session.

Welcome, opening, and requirementd for the course LATA 4000/6000 the Latin American and Caribbean Studies (LACS) Program Weekly Seminar Series

Come meet students, faculty, and staff and learn about the organizations that are part of the Latinx community at Cornell.

OPEN TO THE CORNELL COMMUNITY!

Hosted by the Latino Living Center, Latina/o Studies Program, Latinx Student Success Office.

Featuring a post-screening panel discussion panel discussing indigenous rights in the Brazil US and will follow the film and includes Wendy Wolford (Global Development), Renata Marques Leitao (College of Human Ecology), and Eric T. Cheyfitz (American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program).

Check out the trailer below.

Pizza will be served. Showing will begin right away.

Co-sponsored by the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program (LACS) and the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program (AIIS) along with collaboration by Cornell Cinema and the Office of the Vice Provost for International Affairs.

The feature documentary debut of director Alex Pritz (“My Dear Kyrgyzstan”), THE TERRITORY follows the vital, inspiring fight of the Indigenous Uru-eu-wau-wau people of Brazil to defend their land from non-Indigenous farmers intent on colonizing their protected territory in the Amazon rainforest. Co-produced by the Uru-eu-wau-wau community, the film draws on intimate access to both the Indigenous perspective and the farmers who want their land to chronicle a conflict that has profound implications for the survival of a people and the planet.

Partially shot by the Uru-eu-wau-wau people and filmed over the course of several years, THE TERRITORY offers an authentic portrait of an Indigenous community’s daily life and struggles. With its breathtaking cinematography showcasing the dramatic landscape and richly textured sound design, the film brings audiences deep into the precious ecosystem they are fighting to protect.

Since the Uru-eu-wau-wau were first contacted by the Brazilian government in 1981, their territory has become an island of green rainforest surrounded by denuded farms and ranches — the results of four decades of unchecked deforestation. The community has faced environmentally destructive and often violent incursions into their sovereign territory by nonnatives seeking to exploit the land. Illegal logging and land clearing incursions have become more frequent and more brazen over the years.

Inside Uru-eu-wau-wau territory, there are fewer than 200 people, including elders and children, to defend nearly 7,000 square miles of rainforest. On the edges of the protected lands, a network of farmers organizes to stake their claims through official channels, while individual land-grabbers begin clear-cutting swaths of rainforest for themselves. With the community’s survival at stake, Bitaté Uru-eu-wau-wau and Neidinha Bandeira — a young Indigenous leader and his female mentor — must find new ways to protect the rainforest from encroaching invaders. But rather than rely on others to tell their story, the Uru-eu-wau-wau take control of the narrative and create their own news media team to bring the world the truth.

More on the film at:

https://films.nationalgeographic.com/the-territory

The Territory Trailer (2022)

Co-sponsored by: History of Art Department

With its striking stonework, dramatically sited buildings, and impressive terraces cascading down steep mountainsides, Inca architecture has fascinated visitors to the Andes for centuries. Yet, this lithic architecture was only one part of the complex built environment of the Inca. In this talk, Nair explores how issues of permanence and ephemerality were crucial to Inca building practices and reveal the critical role gender played in creating and giving meaning to place.

Stella Nair’s scholarship focuses on the built environment of indigenous communities in the Americas. Trained as an architect and architectural historian, Nair has conducted fieldwork in Bolivia, Mexico, Peru, and the United States, with ongoing projects in the South Central Andes. Nair’s book, At Home with the Sapa Inca: Architecture, Space, and Legacy at Chinchero (University of Texas Press, 2015), examines the sophisticated ways in which the Inca manipulated space and architecture to impose their authority. She has also published (with Jean-Pierre Protzen), The Stones of Tiahuanaco: A Study of Architecture and Construction (Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, 2013), which explores one of the world’s most artful and sophisticated carving traditions.

Nair has received numerous research grants and fellowships from the American Philosophical Association, the Center for the Study of the Visual Arts (National Gallery of Art), Dumbarton Oaks, the Fulbright Institute, the Getty Foundation, and the John Carter Brown Library. More recently, Nair was awarded a Rome Prize by the American Academy of Rome and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation. Currently, Nair directs the Andean Laboratory and the Architecture laboratory at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology.

In this talk, conceptual artist Violette Bule in conversation with Irina R. Troconis (Department of Romance Studies) will discuss a series of Bule’s works that engage with the political, social, and cultural dimensions of migration, both in the context of Venezuela’s current migration crisis and in the broader context of Latin American migration. Reflecting on issues such as identity anxiety, jurisdiction, territoriality, nationality, identification, bureaucratic performance, concentric borders, bi-dimensionality, and transitoriality, the talk will analyze the intersections of identity and territory that materialize as shared experiences of living and belonging through art practices.

Violette Bule is a Venezuelan-Lebanese conceptual artist and an MFA candidate at the University of Houston. Her work engages with a wide variety of topics—migration, identity, memory, violence, community engagement, digital technologies, the politics of space, and the social and political reality of contemporary Venezuela—and has been exhibited nationally and internationally. She was selected for the 11 Installations Artist Project founded by MOCA, Art League, and HAA, Houston, Texas. She was also the recipient of a SOMA SUMMER - MEXICO CITY grant awarded by the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, and of the first artist residency awarded by Cornell’s Romance Studies Department.

Co-Sponsor: Romance Studies Department

This interactive talk will serve as an introduction to the activist forms that make up the arsenal of the Theatre of the Oppressed (TO): a collection of games, techniques, and exercises using theatre as a vehicle for personal, political, and social change. Originally developed in Brazil by theatre innovator Augusto Boal, TO was inspired in part by the educational theories of Paulo Freire, and employed with peasants and workers throughout Latin America. Today, the techniques are used internationally and have been adapted by countless companies and practitioners. Join us to learn about TO’s foundational theories, its growth in Latin America and its practice in the United States, along with some of TO’s most well-known exercises.

In celebration of Halloween: Coffee, Cider, and Donuts served.

Alexander Santiago-Jirau (he/him/his) is Director of Education at New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW). In this role, he oversees all of NYTW’s education and engagement initiatives, including the Mind the Gap (MTG) intergenerational theatre program, student matinees, in-school teaching artist residencies, after-school programs, master classes, administrative fellowships, and community-based programs. A Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) practitioner who studied and worked with Augusto Boal, Alex has facilitated many workshops throughout his career, particularly with youth, educators and immigrant communities. He is Past-President of the Board of Directors of Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed, Inc., a national organization devoted to the work of liberatory educators, activists, artists, and community organizers, and a current board member for the NYC Arts in Education Roundtable, a service organization for arts education practitioners.

Alex has presented his work at numerous conferences and his writing has appeared in The Indypendent, TYA Today, The Cross Border Project Blog (Spain), “Come Closer”: Critical Perspectives on Theatre of the Oppressed, The Routledge Companion to Theatre of the Oppressed, and Applied Theatre with Youth: Education, Engagement, Activism. He has taught Latin American and Latinx Theatre at Drew University and currently teaches TO for the Department of Drama at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and the Educational Theatre program at NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. He holds a BS in Urban and Regional Studies from Cornell University and an MA in Educational Theatre from NYU Steinhardt.