Forging Lasting Peace: Movements for Justice in a Pluralist World (Bartels World Affairs Lecture)

In our ethnically, racially, linguistically, and religiously diverse world, how do we find common ground? Amid ongoing conflict and violence, how do we foster lasting peace? In our world full of inequalities, what practices of activism and solidarity lead to transformative change? Drawing on her experiences of mobilizing, demanding, and brokering peace, 2011 Nobel Peace Prize winner Leymah Gbowee shares how action and activism can shape a just world.

A book signing and reception with refreshments will follow the lecture.

Lecture: 5:00–6:30 p.m. | Alice Statler AuditoriumBook signing and reception: 6:30–7:30 p.m. | Park AtriumFree ticket required for in-person attendance: Reserve your ticket. Join the lecture virtually by registering at eCornell.

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Learn more about our distinguished speaker by reading her book, Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War. Pick up your copy from The Cornell Store and bring it to the book signing! Buffalo Street Books will also have copies for sale at the event.

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How did Leymah Gbowee's protests lead to lasting peace? Read a Bartels explainer by Naminata Diabate.

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About Leymah Gbowee

Nobel Peace laureate Leymah Gbowee is a Liberian peace activist, trained social worker, and women's rights advocate. She currently serves as executive director of the Women, Peace, and Security Program at Columbia University's Earth Institute and is the founder and current president of the Gbowee Peace Foundation Africa, founding head of the Liberia Reconciliation Initiative, and cofounder and former executive director of the Women, Peace, and Security Network Africa. She is also a founding member and former Liberian coordinator of Women in Peacebuilding Network/West Africa Network for Peacebuilding.

Host and Sponsors

The Bartels World Affairs Lecture is a signature event of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. Part of Einaudi's work on Inequalities, Identities, and Justice, this year's lecture is cosponsored by Einaudi's Institute for African Development and Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, in cooperation with Peace is Loud. To learn more about Peace is Loud and discover other empowering women peacebuilders, visit www.peaceisloud.org.

Bartels World Affairs Lecture

The Einaudi Center’s flagship event brings distinguished international figures to campus each academic year to speak on global topics and meet with Cornell faculty and students, particularly undergraduates. The lecture and related events are made possible by the generosity of Henry E. Bartels ’48 and Nancy Horton Bartels ’48.

w/post-screening discussion with Denise Green (Director, Cornell Fashion & Textile Collection) and filmmaker Katherine Sender (Dept of Communication/FGSS)

2022>Directed by Katherine Sender and Shuchi Kothari

Threads: Sustaining India’s Textile Tradition is a documentary film that follows the stories of fashion designers and fabric artisans as they transform traditional textile practices for contemporary fashion markets. After decades of decline in demand for legacy fabrics, these stories demonstrate that committed, collaborative relationships between designers and artisans can innovate traditional practices. We meet Chanderi Master Weaver Bhagwandas who describes how Sanjay Garg (Raw Mango) refined motifs and color in Chanderi weaving. We explore Rahul Mishra’s collaboration with bandhani Master Craftsman Jabbarbhai to innovate tie-dyeing processes in merino wool. We watch Aneeth Arora (Péro) as she works with artisans and craftspeople to modernize traditional silhouettes. And we discover how Rahul and Shikha Mangal (Vrisa) marry handmade with machine-made processes to sustain artisans and appeal to contemporary consumers. The film features interviews with designers in Delhi and Jaipur; hand weavers in Chanderi, 350 miles south of New Delhi; bandhani tie-dyers in Bhuj, in India’s north west; and block printers near Jaipur in Rajasthan. The clothes they produce appeal to an increasingly affluent Indian middle class and global diaspora by using textiles that reference traditional techniques in a contemporary way. Threads argues that sustainability involves more than environmental stewardship and improved economic circumstances for workers: Designers and artisans collaborate in ongoing creative relationships to reinvigorate both traditional textile techniques and the communities who produce them.

In English, Gujarati, Kutchhi, and Hindi.

58 minutes

2021 > India > Directed by P.S. Vinothraj
With Chellapandi, Karuthadaiyaan, Philip Arulodss
"India's nominee for Best International Feature Film at the Oscars is P. S. Vinothraj's first feature, set in a remote Tamil Nadu village, where a rage-filled man uses his young son as a pawn to force his estranged wife to return. Vinothraj films their journey in elaborately nuanced detail and dramatizes women's and children's sly and bold forms of resistance to patriarchal violence." (Richard Brody, The New Yorker) Subtitled.
1 hr 15 min

The recent arrests and detentions of Sri Lankan writers, bloggers and poets form part of a long history of extrajudicial detention which elucidates the ever-present stakes of writing about Sri Lanka, or simply Writing Sri Lanka. This graduate student conference aims to collectively reflect on how these stakes surface in Sri Lanka Studies research, regardless of genre or discipline. Who wields the power to determine which writings about Sri Lanka are legitimate and authentic? Who determines which writings are benign to the state and which writings pose a threat? Under what circumstances are some writings deemed dangerous or illicit, in the guises of patriotism, security, or even the global war on terror? What power do words have—whether in literature or academia, across different languages and genres—to question, critique, and surpass how the state and any other institutions draw and enforce these distinctions?

Panel 1: Writing the Sri Lankan Nation

A Comparative Analysis of the Coverage of Rabindranath Tagore’s third Trip to Ceylon in 1934

Chamila Somirathna, Sinhala, University of Kelaniya

Resisting the Spectacular: Ethical Approaches to Engaging the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami

Soraya Zarook, English, University of California, Riverside

Queer Voices in Post-War Transitional Sri Lanka

Thiyagaraja Waradas, Social and Policy Sciences, University of Bath

Discussant: Anindita Banerjee, Comparative Literature, Cornell University

Panel 2: Writing Sri Lankan History

“Harmful” Genres in Sri Lankan Literary History: Revisiting Martin Wickramasinghe’s Bavataraṇaya

Crystal Baines , English, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

From Kavikāra to Folk Singers: Sinhala Nationalism and the Folklorisation of Kavi

Tom Peterson, Music, SOAS, University of London

Discussant: Viranjini Munasinghe, Anthropology, Cornell University

Co-sponsored by the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies