Southeast Asia Program
Trump 2.0 Hollowing US Human Connections to Southeast Asia
Cuts to Title VI NRCs and FLAS Fellowships Undermine Scholarship
The United States' human and intellectual connections to Southeast Asia are gradually being undermined.
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Bartels Lecture: Samantha Power
Former USAID Director Calls for Rebuilding Foreign Aid
Samantha Power challenged students to “build what comes next” during the Bartels World Affairs Lecture on April 16.
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Information Session: Careers for International Relations Minors
April 29, 2026
11:00 am
Join the International Relations Minor for a virtual career information session featuring Cornell alumni working in diplomacy, education, and law. Panelists will reflect on their career paths, share advice on internships, graduate school, and professional transitions, and answer student questions about careers connected to international relations.
Register here.
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Speakers
Eric Andersen is the Political-Economic Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Maputo, Mozambique. Having joined the U.S. State Department in 2009, he previously served as Political Counselor (Acting) in Islamabad, Pakistan. His other assignments have included Cairo, Kyiv, and Khartoum, as well as in Washington, D.C. as Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. Prior to entering the Foreign Service, he spent four years on Capitol Hill as a Professional Staff Member for the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. In his first stint with the U.S. Government, he flew the SH-60B “Seahawk” helicopter as an aviator in the U.S. Navy. He holds an M.A. in Security Policy from the George Washington University, and a A.B. in English Literature from Cornell University (Class of 1996).
Angie Yucht Swenson, M.S.Ed., Ed.M., is the founder and principal tutor of AYS Tutoring and Consulting, a practice she launched after more than a decade working in both private and public schools across New York City. She specializes in supporting elementary through high school students with learning challenges and has worked with families from diverse international backgrounds, including Russia, Israel, and France. Angie graduated from Cornell University in 2010, majoring in Human Development and minoring in International Relations, followed by a master’s in General and Special Education from Hunter College, and a master’s in School Leadership from Bank Street College of Education. She resides in NYC with her husband, two daughters, and a goldendoodle.
Emma Marshak is a commercial litigator in Washington, DC who specializes in judgment enforcement. She has enforced domestic and international judgments, including awards from investor-state arbitration, in federal and state courts across the United States.
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This session is presented by the Einaudi Center for International Studies. The International Relations minor is open to all Cornell undergraduate students interested in learning about the politics, economics, history, languages, and cultures of the world.
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Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies
East Asia Program
Southeast Asia Program
Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Institute for African Development
Institute for European Studies
South Asia Program
Migrations Program
Southwest Asia and North Africa Program
Society for the Humanities Spring Fellows' Conference on "Scale"
April 24, 2026
9:30 am
A. D. White House, Guerlac Room
Join this year's cohort of Fellows at the Society for the Humanities for presentations on work-in-progress on the 2025-26 focal theme of Scale. Each presentation will be followed by a Q&A. Open to the public.
Scale Fellows’ Conference Friday, April 24, 2026
9:00-9:30am Coffee & Light Refreshments
9:30-10:30am Panel 1
9:30am Addicted to Formlessness: Thomas Mann's Medieval Sculpture
Luke Fidler, Society Fellow
Assistant Professor, Art History, University of Southern California
10:00am Building the North American Anarchist Movement Through Continental Convergences (1986-1989)
Spencer Beswick, HSP Postdoctoral Associate
Cornell University
15-minute break
10:45am-11:45am Panel 2
10:45am The Long 1780s from Provincial, Viceregal, and Imperial Perspectives
Ernesto Bassi, Faculty Fellow
Associate Professor, History, Cornell University
11:15am Integrated Rural Circuits: A Scalar History of Southeast Asia’s Computational Environments
Shaoling Ma, Faculty Fellow
Associate Professor, Asian Studies, Cornell University
11:45-1:15pm Lunch
1:15pm-2:45pm Panel 3
1:15pm A Love Supreme: Toward an Afro-Native Study of Land Acknowledgments
Tiffany Hale, Society Fellow
Assistant Professor, Religion, Barnard College
1:45pm Group Work: How to Practice Queer and Trans Kinship
Teagan Bradway, Society Fellow
Professor, English, SUNY Cortland
2:15pm Poussin’s Blind Orion
Benjamin Anderson, Faculty Fellow
Associate Professor, History of Art and Classics, Cornell University
15-minute break
3-4pm Keynote Speaker
Scale's Remainders; or, Television's Impossible Floor Plans
Nick Salvato
Frederic J. Whiton Professor of Liberal Studies in the Department of Performing and Media Arts, Cornell University
4:30pm: Reception
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Program
Southeast Asia Program
Gamelan Concert To Highlight Thai Royal Anthem
April 26 at 7:30pm
The April 26 concert by the Cornell Gamelan Ensemble will feature a piece inspired by Thailand’s royal anthem to celebrate and welcome Parkorn Wangpaiboonkit, who joined the music department as an assistant professor last fall. The concert will also include other gamelan pieces with a variety of styles and melodies.
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Program
PMAPS: A Screening of NEW WAVE
April 30, 2026
6:00 pm
Schwartz Center for Performing Arts, Film Forum
The Performing and Media Arts Presentation Series (PMAPS) presents a film screening of New Wave on the 51st anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War.
Get your free ticket at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/new-wave-at-cornell-university-tickets-198…
Filmmaker Elizabeth Ai embarks on a project to tell a story of joy and youthful defiance as she explores a musical phenomenon in the 1980s known to Vietnamese American teens as new wave. As she delves into the lives of family members and icons of the new wave scene, she uncovers much more than just music and fashion. In the heart of Orange County, California, this counterculture movement takes the youth by storm, becoming a sanctuary for rebellious teens. The fun Euro-synth dance beats and punk/goth aesthetics mask deep traumas--broken dreams and unfulfilled expectations that have shaped her community. The joyful memories of her uncles and aunts sneaking out to this underground scene clash with her own painful childhood, haunted by her mother's abandonment. As the filmmaker digs deeper, the excavation becomes an emotional journey, unraveling mysteries that touch on cultural identity, generational trauma, and the Vietnam War's lasting impact. The exploration transforms from a love letter to her community into a cathartic process for the filmmaker. By confronting these buried emotions, the film takes us on a soulful journey that binds wounds, celebrates resilience, and offers new beginnings.
Co-sponsored by the Southeast Asian Program (SEAP).
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Program
Southeast Asia Program
GETSEA Community Book Read with Faizah Zakaria
April 15, 2026
7:00 pm
Join us for a virtual discussion with Faizah Zakaria, author of The Camphor Tree and the Elephant and winner of the 2025 Benda Prize. This virtual conversation is open to the broader public, and is hosted by GETSEA.
All participants should read the Introduction and Chapter 1.
The Camphor Tree and the Elephant offers a striking rethinking of the Anthropocene in Southeast Asia, tracing how religious transformation, from animism to Islam and Christianity, reshaped human relationships to the environment in the nineteenth-century Sumatran highlands and Malay world. Drawing on ethnography, oral traditions, and colonial archives, Zakaria shows how cosmological change, colonial governance, and plantation economies together produced new ways of imagining and exploiting nature.
The Community Book Read is structured as a live, discussion-based conversation with the author, with Juno Salazar Parreñas as discussant, bringing together faculty and graduate students from across institutions. Coming in with at least some familiarity with the text makes a real difference. Even reading the introduction and first chapter will give you enough to engage meaningfully.
Register here: https://get-sea.org/events/
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Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Southeast Asia Program
The Iran War Is Changing How Millions of People Cook — and What They Eat
Chris Barrett, IAD/SEAP
Chris Barrett, a Cornell University agricultural and development economist, warns that the ongoing conflict could exacerbate food insecurity in Africa and globally, and discusses its implications for the clean energy transition.
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14Strings! Sage Chapel Concert
April 26, 2026
4:00 pm
Sage Chapel
14Strings! will be performing at Sage Chapel on Sunday, April 26th from 4pm to 6pm!
14Strings! is a Filipino style Rondalla based in Ithaca, New York. The main instruments are 14 stringed plucked instruments like the banduria, the laud (Lute), and the octavina.
14Strings! was originally a student organization at Cornell University, but there is also a community group consisting of non-students and local residents. The two groups regularly practice and perform together. Members include Cornell undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, and staff as well as Ithaca residents with no Cornell affiliation. Current members come from China, Malaysia, Japan, the USA and (of course) the Philippines.
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Program
Southeast Asia Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Why Myanmar Top General’s Exit is Window Dressing to Cement Military Rule
Kyaw Hsan Hlaing, SEAP
Kyaw Hsan Hlaing, a Cornell University PhD student, describes Myanmar's power shift as a constitutional repackaging of continued military rule.