A film screening by Cornell Cinema.

M, a university dropout low on money and luck, volunteers to take care of his terminally ill grandmother, in the hope of pocketing an inheritance. However, winning Grandma's favor is no easy feat. She proves to be a tough nut to crack—demanding, exacting, and exceedingly difficult to please. To add to the drama, he's not the only one gunning for the inheritance. M soon finds himself embroiled in a gripping competition, where he must go to great lengths to become the apple of Grandma's eye before time runs out, all in pursuit of a life-changing, multimillion-dollar inheritance.

Directed by Thai filmmaker Pat Boonnitipat, How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies offers a candid and comedic take on life, love, and family affairs.

Cosponsored by the Southeast Asia Program at the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. Special thanks to Fulbright visiting researcher Vince Ha.

Part of Cornell Cinema's "Worth a Watch" series. Courtesy of Well Go USA Entertainment. In Thai with English subtitles.

Hot Stuff is an AIFIS film award winning documentary and part of a trio of Indonesian films that delve into energy policies in Indonesia, corporate ties to those policies, and their detrimental effects on local environments and populations.

Director Dandhy Laksono and Producer Cypri Dale will join GETSEA live from the University of Michigan’s Center for Southeast Asia Studies as 20 universities from across North America connect via Zoom to watch Hot Stuff simultaneously, followed by a discussion about the film, energy policy in Indonesia, and the new Prabowo Subianto administration’s response to local grassroots movements in the country.

A virtual-only option will be available for viewers from around the world to join as well. You can register for a remote viewing of the film & event by clicking here.

Join Kim Aris, son of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, for an important discussion on Myanmar's ongoing crisis. This event is an opportunity to come together, hear firsthand about Kim's mission and explore ways we can take action to support the people of Myanmar together.

Topics to be discussed:

The urgent need for access to his mother and concerns over her health.The worsening humanitarian crisis and ways to help those in need.Advocacy efforts to free all political prisoners and restore democracy.

Talk by Ali Houissa and Laurent Ferri (Curators of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection)

Our CMS seminar today will be led by the curator of the Middle Eastern Collection in Olin Library, who will be hosting us to see precious objects in the library's collection about Islam. We have many world-class books, some of them centuries old, which show the history and evolution of Islam over a long period, and across many cultures. This is a wonderful opportunity to see some of the treasures of Cornell’s collection that are rarely seen, and which span centuries of time and thousands of miles of geography in Islamic lands, from Morocco to Indonesia.

Exploring Solid Waste Solutions for Global Climate Goals

Human activities have led to a global surface temperature rise of 1.1°C compared to preindustrial levels as of the end of 2020. As one of the greenhouse gases, methane concentrations surged to 1911.8 parts per billion in 2022, more than double the preindustrial levels. Due to its short atmospheric lifetime, methane emerged as a key topic at COP26 for its ability to rapidly mitigate global warming. This talk addresses a gap in global analysis by exploring how enhanced solid waste management can mitigate warming and support the achievement of the Paris Agreement’s 1.5° and 2°C targets, along with the commitments outlined in the Global Methane Pledge. With global solid waste generation expected to reach 2.56 to 3.33 billion tonnes by 2050, the greenhouse gas emissions from the global municipal solid waste system are forecasted under a business-as-usual scenario using Bayesian-optimized artificial neural networks, and their reduction potential is assessed. We found that abrupt technical and behavioral changes could lead to a net-zero warming solid waste system, leading to 11 to 27 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide warming-equivalent emissions under the temperature limits. However, these changes necessitate rapid adoption within nine to 17 years to align with the Global Methane Pledge.

Bio: Vincent Woon is dedicated to achieving transformative resilience in climate sustainability by advancing the complex understanding of the environment-economic-social nexus. Named a 2023 I&ECR Class of Influential Researcher by the American Chemical Society, he has published over 70 refereed articles for the past five years, including Science as the corresponding author. His research work has been featured in Future Earth, The Guardian, China Science Daily, and Anthropocene Magazine. Before entering academia, he worked at Accenture and led green architectural designs for new mega townships in Malaysia and Indonesia. He is the Global Development Network Outstanding Research on Development First Prize Awardee (2021), a Fulbright YSEALI Fellow (2021), a CrossCulture Programme Fellow (2021), a UNFCCC-GIR-CASTT Fellow (2022), a SUSI Scholar (2023), a Professional Technologist certified by the Malaysia Board of Technologists, an Accredited Green Building Professional, and a member of both the Global Young Academy and the Young Scientist Network Academy of Sciences Malaysia. He earned his Ph.D. in environmental engineering from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology through the Hong Kong Ph.D. Fellowship Scheme. He is currently an assistant professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) and an adjunct associate professor at Xiamen University Malaysia.

Keynote address of the 27th SEAP Graduate Student Conference.

This talk, drawing upon years of fieldwork in Malaysia and South India has two main aims: First, in questioning the mobility and translatability of biomedical interventions given cultural conceptions of self, spirit, and wellness, I ask to what extent cultural difference really matters, as some have argued for South and Southeast Asia? Second, I query the extent to which mobility, modernity, and madness are inextricably linked, problematizing the very construction of inside and outside forces as sometimes naturalized by anthropologists, healers, and clinicians when writing on mental health, particularly when concerning spirit possession, that most “traditional” of afflictions. This binary, in turn, has effaced the complex entanglements of difference and difference-making, the heterodox and power-laden values that posit binaries by those powerful and vulnerable alike, albeit with different stakes. I argue that mobility and immobility within symbolic and semantic registers also matters, along with geographic and social mobility.

Andrew C. Willford is a professor of anthropology and Asian studies at Cornell University. His latest book, The Future of Bangalore’s Cosmopolitan Pasts: Civility and Difference in a Global City (University of Hawaii, 2018) examines the politics of language, religion, identity, and belonging in Bangalore, India. His previous research focused on forms of Tamil and Hindu displacement, revivalism, and identity politics in Malaysia.

The conference schedule is available here.

More details are also available on the conference website here.

A full packet with information about all papers being presented is available here.

How is Southeast Asia animated and made to move? Who crosses boundaries, who stays still, and what jams, messes, conscriptions, and inscriptions are we bound to?

Resisting both dreams of frictionless passage and fantasies of fixed origins, the theme of the 27th SEAP Graduate Student Conference waves in reflections on mobility and its constraints. We await explorations of that which is trans (-national, -Pacific, -imperial, -gressive) or in trans (-ition, -mission, -lation). We welcome interrogations on that which is mobile yet clandestine, unintended, or interrupted. What kinetic energies are released by diasporas in seeds, chemicals, finances, and tastes? What constitutes the motion in activist, insurgent, protest, or resistance movements, and who moves against the movers? What disturbed temporalities, what uncertain spatialities, what contingent choreographies are produced by the travel of soldiers, pollutants, scientists, viruses, and images of young hippos in Thai zoos?

Moo Deng and we invite submissions which agitate stagnant pools of nationality and syncopate staid rhythms of history. Viewing the academy itself as a site of stupor, we also welcome scholarship which unsettles the heavy dust of area studies.

The 27th SEAP Graduate Student Conference will be held on March 7-9, 2025 at Cornell University’s George McT. Kahin Center for Advanced Research on Southeast Asia in Ithaca, New York.

Please direct any questions to seapgatty@cornell.edu