Join this year's cohort of Fellows at the Society for the Humanities for presentations on work-in-progress on the 2024-25 focal theme of Silence. Each presentation will be followed by a Q&A. Open to the public.

Friday, April 25

Coffee and light refreshments: 9:30am

10:00am-11:30pm Panel 1

Migration to the Moon, and Other Theories of Avian Absence
Julia Laurel Mueller Society Fellow

Silent, Silenced, and Silencing: Black Deaf and Blind Education in the Jim Crow South
Jenifer Barclay Society Fellow

Transnational Historical Novels and Human Rights History
Cassie Falke Society Fellow

15-minute break

11:45am-12:45pm Panel 2

The Cold War, Capitalism, and the Color Line: Reading Silence in The Human Condition
Patchen Markell Faculty Fellow

Sounding Khmerican Life in Straight Thru Cambotown
Brian V. Sengdala Mellon Graduate Fellow

12:45pm-2:00pm Lunch

2:00-3:00pm Panel 3

C'Est Si Bon: The Queer Pas de Trois of Lorraine Hansberry’s “Chanson du Konallis”
Sara Warner Faculty Fellow

Is Yeshaya Silent-?-The Presence of the Jewish Dead
Jonathan Boyarin Faculty Fellow

15-minute break

3:15pm-4:45pm Keynote

Re-storying Silence: Mad, Deaf, and Disability Histories
Susan Burch
Professor of American Studies, Middlebury College

In this talk, Susan Burch traces some of the multivalent relationships silence has to institutionalization, institutionalized people, and to their kin on the outside. Centering on life stories and drawing on critical disability, Mad, and deaf history, she reveals wide-ranging meanings and functions of silences that cross generations and reach into the present day.

5:00pm Reception

This event will feature American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation.

Please contact adwhitehouse@cornell.edu for accommodations.

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The Elephants of Dzanga Bai - Photo and Sound Installation
Thursday, April 24 5-7pm
A.D. White House

“The Elephants of Dzanga Bai.” Photo and sound installation by Ivonne Kienast (K Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics) and Annie Lewandowski (Department of Music), in collaboration with the Society for the Humanities 2025-26 focal theme of "Silence" and the Annual Spring Fellows' Conference.

For more information visit: https://events.cornell.edu/event/the-elephants-of-dzanga-bai-photo-and-…

Presented by GETSEA and AIFIS

Are you a graduate student planning your first research trip to Indonesia? Join our event to learn about research permits, visas, and preparing for fieldwork.
Hear from experienced researchers sharing tips, insights, and lessons learned from conducting research across Indonesia.

WITH SPECIAL GUESTS:
Maho Ishiguro (Emory University)
Wendy Erb (Cornell University)
Annas Bentari (AIFIS)
Chris Hulshof (University of Wisconsin)

International Fair showcases Cornell's global opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students. Explore the fair and find out about international majors and minors, language study, study abroad, funding opportunities, global internships, Cornell Global Hubs, and more.

The International Fair is sponsored by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies and Office of Global Learning (both part of Global Cornell) in partnership with the Language Resource Center.

Register on CampusGroups to receive a reminder. Registration is not required.

The Life and Death of the Forever Soldier

Wars across the world are increasingly endless. They are also increasingly drugged. Nowhere is this entanglement more clear than in Myanmar—home to the longest-running civil war and the largest hub of opium production in the world. Nowhere are the effects of this entanglement more palpable than in what I call the “forever soldier”—a soldier whose fight never truly ends but shifts from one battlefield to another.

In this talk, I introduce the key claims of my dissertation and ground them in a concrete case study. My dissertation argues that addiction, rehabilitation, and war sustain one another, pulling soldiers into cycles with no exit. War, I suggest, is not just a violent event but an enduring structure that renews itself by moving soldiers across overlapping planes of battle—political, economic, moral, and even biochemical.

To ground these claims, I focus on a pivotal moment in the life and death of the forever soldier: the emergence of a new revolution after Myanmar’s 2021 coup amidst decades of multiple, ongoing revolutionary struggles. Popular and scholarly accounts often present this as a moment of collective revolutionary fervor. But attention to the experiences of older generations and the rank-and-file reveals something different. Amidst the resurgence of conflict, forced conscription by long-standing ethno-revolutionary armies has intensified, pulling veterans and addicts back into war’s churn. For many, this return has not only produced exhaustion but also a deepened disillusionment with the promise of revolution—that radical violence will produce radical change. In turn, some are now refusing revolution, deserting from the frontlines and rejecting a dominant logic that values the quick and the strong while abandoning the worn out and the old. Yet this refusal is not just withdrawal. It’s an embrace of a different kind of politics. One that values slow, fragile acts of care over speed and strength. Not an escape from the endless cycle of war, but a way of making life—and death—beyond revolution.

Joshua Mitchell is a political and medical anthropologist and scholar of conflict and development, critical health studies, and Christianity. His research examines how illicit economies, addiction and rehabilitation, and armed social and religious movements intersect in Myanmar’s civil war. He will complete his PhD in sociocultural anthropology at Cornell University in July 2025. Starting this fall, he will be a Postdoctoral Associate in the Ethical and Legal Implications of Psychedelics in Society program at Baylor College of Medicine.

Join us for a conversation discussing the historical and contemporary relationship between the United States, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, beginning with their acquisition in 1898 following the Spanish-American War. As sites of U.S. territorial expansion, both were governed through military rule and colonial policies justified by racial and economic ideologies.

While Puerto Ricans were granted U.S. citizenship in 1917, the Philippines moved toward independence by 1946, creating divergent but interconnected paths shaped by migration, labor extraction, and strategic military interests. The discussion moves from this shared colonial foundation to contemporary issues—including large-scale migration, economic dependency, grassroots resistance, and debates over political status. It highlights how diasporic communities engage with questions of identity and belonging and how movements for self-determination continue to challenge the legacy of the U.S. empire today.

Panelists

Christine Bacareza Balance is an associate professor of performing and media arts and Asian American studies at Cornell University. Her work as a scholar and cultural worker bridges performance, popular culture, and Asian American studies, with a particular focus on Filipino and Filipino-American experiences. Her research and teaching explore how music, media, and performance shape diasporic identity, memory, and political life. She is also engaged in community-based and public humanities work that connects academia to broader conversations around race, empire, and cultural expression.

Rebeca L. Hey-Colón is an associate professor with a joint appointment in the Department of Literatures in English and the Latina/o Studies Program at Cornell University. She is a scholar of Afro-Latinx and Caribbean cultures whose work explores how race, migration, and religion shape identity and resistance across the Americas. Her research and teaching center on Afro-diasporic spiritual practices, visual and literary cultures, and the everyday experiences of Latinx communities. She engages questions of colonialism, borders, and belonging through a focus on cultural expression and community knowledge.

Host

This event is organized by the Migrations Program's undergraduate Migrations scholars and co-sponsored by Latina/o Studies Program and Asian American Studies

Don't miss our first event hosted by the Migrations scholars on April 21: Margins and Mobilization: Migrant Worker Precarity and Power in the Trump-era Economy.