Gatty Lecture Series

Join us for a talk by Viola Lasmana, (ACLS Emerging Voices Fellow / South and Southeast Asian American Studies Postdoctoral Associate, Department of American Studies, Rutgers University-New Brunswick), who will discuss Southeast Asian feminist practices and pedagogies.

This Gatty Lecture will take place at the Rockefeller Hall 374. Lunch will be served. For questions, contact seapgatty@cornell.edu.

About the Talk

This talk explores the possibilities of Southeast Asian feminist practices and pedagogies through a discussion of transnational Indonesian and Vietnamese experimental documentaries, Children of Srikandi (Children of Srikandi Collective, 2012) and Surname Viet Given Name Nam (Trinh T. Minh-ha, 1989). Exploding the documentary form and subverting representation, these works activate a poetics of collaboration and generate what Lasmana calls a shadow imagination, enabling new ways of articulating marginalized women's lives beyond the specter of the nation.

About the Speaker

Viola Lasmana is an Emerging Voices Fellow at the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and a South and Southeast Asian American Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of American Studies at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, where she is also affiliated with Global Asias and Asian Languages and Cultures. She received her PhD in English from the University of Southern California with a certificate in Digital Media and Culture from the USC School of Cinematic Arts, and has taught at Columbia University, USC, and Occidental College. Her work has appeared in Film Quarterly, make/shift: feminisms in motion, The Cine-Files, Visual Anthropology, Alternative Historiographies of the Digital Humanities, and more. She is currently completing a book, Shadow Imaginations: Transpacific Approaches to Post-1965 Indonesian Archives, on the reconstitution of Indonesia’s decimated cultural archive.

Gatty Lecture Series and the Visual Culture Colloquium

Join us for a talk by Chanon Kenji Praepipatmongkol, (Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art, McGill University), who will discuss the work of reformist monk Buddhadasa Bhikkhu.

This Gatty Lecture will take place at the Rockefeller Hall 374. Lunch will be served, and this event is co-sponsored by the Department of History of Art. For questions, contact seapgatty@cornell.edu.

About the Talk

The temple as exhibitionary complex, the sangha as art public, the filmic as animistic apparatus: these emergent conjectures in the study of Thai visual modernity take religious grammar as a regenerative ground for aesthetic and social form. Building on such interventions, this talk approaches the work of reformist monk Buddhadasa Bhikkhu (1906–1993) as the basis for reconsidering some of contemporary art’s key concepts: the installative, the participatory, and the mediatic. Conceived as an art gallery and movie screening hall, Buddhadasa’s Spiritual Theater (ca. 1962–1972) introduced a visual and soteriological pedagogy that privileged aniconic visuality in a bid not only to rationalize Buddhist teaching, but also to promote a distinctly religious media economy. Buddhadasa’s interest was in the generativity of intermedial translations, whether monks painting murals enlarged from ink paintings, villagers making copies of sculptural reliefs from the stupas at Sanchi, or disciples turning art history slide lectures into interactive performances. Where history written under the sign of the avant-garde often pursues novelty, the Spiritual Theater deforms this model through reproduction and reenactment. Such operations open up to the contemporary not as a matter of accelerated succession, but as entropic ecology.

About the Speaker

Chanon Kenji Praepipatmongkol is Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art at McGill University. Previously, he was Curator at Singapore Art Museum and Visiting Lecturer at National University of Singapore. His current book project develops a postsecular approach to Philippine and Thai modernisms, focusing on how artists made a case for abstraction as a testing ground for various forms of aesthetic, moral, and religious conviction. A second project brings together histories of climate control, art conservation, and conceptual art in the tropics to address questions about ontologies of art in an age of environmental crisis. His writing has appeared in Aperture, Artforum, British Art Studies, MoMA Post, and Oxford Art Journal.

Gatty Lecture Series

Join us for a talk by Elliott Prasse-Freeman, (Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, National University of Singapore), who will discuss grassroots political activism in Myanmar.

This Gatty Lecture will take place at the Rockefeller Hall 374. Lunch will be served. For questions, contact seapgatty@cornell.edu.

About the Talk

For decades, the outside world mostly knew Myanmar as the site of a valiant human rights struggle against an oppressive military regime, predominantly through the figure of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. And yet, a closer look at Burmese grassroots sentiments reveals a significant schism between elite human rights cosmopolitans and subaltern Burmese subjects maneuvering under brutal and negligent governance. While elites have endorsed human rights logics, subalterns are ambivalent, often going so far as to refuse rights themselves, seeing in them no more than empty promises. Such alternative perspectives became apparent during Burma’s much-lauded decade-long “transition” from military rule that began in 2011, a period of massive change that saw an explosion of political and social activism. How then do people conduct politics when they lack the legally and symbolically stabilizing force of “rights” to guarantee their incursions against injustice? In this presentation, Elliott Prasse-Freeman describes his recent book on the topic, in which he documents grassroots political activists who advocate for workers and peasants across Burma, covering not only the so-called “democratic transition” from 2011-2021, but it also the February 2021 military coup that ended that experiment and the ongoing mass uprising against it. Taking the reader from protest camps, to flop houses, to prisons, and presenting practices as varied as courtroom immolation, occult cursing ceremonies, and land reoccupations, the talk shows how Burmese subaltern politics compel us to reconsider how rights frameworks operate everywhere.

About the Speaker

Elliott Prasse-Freeman, an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the National University of Singapore, received his PhD from the Department of Anthropology at Yale University. He has conducted long-term fieldwork in Myanmar, and his recently published book (Rights Refused, Stanford University Press) foucses on Burmese subaltern political thought as adduced from an extended ethnography of activism and contentious politics in the country's semi-authoritarian setting. Prasse-Freeman also has a book project on Rohingya ethnogenesis and political subjectivity amidst dislocation and mass violence. His work has appeared in journals such as American Ethnologist, Current Anthropology, Journal of Peasant Studies, Public Culture, and Comparative Studies in Society and History, and he's part of the editorial team at Anthropological Theory, a journal you should consider submitting to.

Gatty Lecture Series

Join us for a talk by Talitha Espiritu, (Associate Professor of Film and New Media, Wheaton College), who will discuss the myth-making of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos’ conjugal dictatorship in the Philippines.

This Gatty Lecture will take place at the Rockefeller Hall 374. Lunch will be served, and this event is co-sponsored by the Department of Performing and Media Arts. For questions, contact seapgatty@cornell.edu.

About the Talk

My talk will explore the sartorial in the myth-making of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos’ conjugal dictatorship in the Philippines (1965-1986). I will focus on fashion designer Christian Espiritu, Imelda Marcos’ chief couturier, who created her iconic image dressed in the Philippine terno, the traditional women’s formal wear, which she wore in all her state visits and state events. I will reconstruct and unpack the elevation of the terno into a state sign and the creative input of fashion designers in the public culture and cultural policy of the dictatorship.

About the Speaker

Talitha Espiritu teaches in the Film and New Media department at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, where she also co-chairs the college’s Diversity, Equity and Access Leadership Team. Her book, Passionate Revolutions: the Media and the Rise and Fall of the Marcos Regime is available from Ohio University Press. Recent publications include a round table article on the 2022 Philippine elections for Contemporary Southeast Asia and she was recently interviewed about the Marcos regime on NPR’s Throughline podcast series.

The Lingua Mater competition invites students and alumni to translate Cornell's Alma Mater into a different language and submit a video of the performed translation. The inaugural Lingua Mater alumni competition took place in 2018 as part of Cornell's Global Grand Challenges Symposium. The top videos received cash prizes.

2023 competition details

Can you translate Cornell’s Alma Mater into your mother tongue (or a language you are learning/have learned at Cornell) and sing it? We invite you to translate “Far Above Cayuga’s Waters” and submit a video of you (and your friends!) performing it, wherever you may be!

Translations do not need to be exact or perfectly in meter but should capture the feel and tune of our university’s Alma Mater. As is customary, include the first verse, refrain, second verse, and refrain in your video submission (for guidance, listen to a performance and read the lyrics).

Video submissions need to be MP4 files at 1920 x 1080 (1080p), in landscape mode with an aspect ratio of 16:9. Please ensure that you have copyright permission for any images/videos you use.

Entries will be reviewed by a panel of judges. Submissions will be judged equally on the translation, the musical quality, and the creativity in visual presentation.

The top three student entries will win cash prizes, the top alumni entry will receive financial support and Cornell swag for a local alumni event.

Winners will be announced during International Education Week (November 13-17, 2023), and the top video will be posted online that week. For alumni, be sure to subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay in the know of this competition and international alumni activities.

Student entries may be submitted by any registered Cornell student or group of students.
Alumni entries may be submitted by any Cornell alumni groups outside of the United States and Canada.

Submission deadline: Thursday, November 9, 2023

SUBMIT YOUR VIDEO AND LYRICS HERE

Please contact Angelika Kraemer, Director of the Language Resource Center, if you have any questions.

The Lingua Mater competition is co-sponsored by the Language Resource Center, the Office of the Vice Provost for International Affairs, and the Office of International Alumni Relations.

Gatty Lecture Series

Join us for a talk by Nina Baker Capistrano, (Consulting Curator and Special Projects Consultant, Ayala Museum, Philippines), who will discuss reinscribing P’u-tuan (Butuan) in the metanarrative of Early Southeast Asia.

This Gatty Lecture will take place at the Rockefeller Hall 374. Lunch will be served, and this event is co-sponsored by the Department of History of Art, and by the Cornell Institute for Archaeology and Material Science. For questions, contact seapgatty@cornell.edu.

About the Talk

Maps delineate the imagined contours of history and empire. Exclusion from cartographic representations thus marginalizes, blurs, and erases narratives and geographies. This paper attempts to recover and reinscribe the enigmatic polity of P’u-tuan (Butuan) on northeastern Mindanao, Philippines, in the metanarrative of Early Southeast Asia. The arrival of trade missions from P’u-tuan at the Chinese imperial court in the 11th century is documented in the Song Shih (Song History) compiled in 1345 from earlier sources. The early polity’s existence is confirmed as well by archaeological excavations conducted by the National Museum of the Philippines since the 1970s. Archaeologists suggest the existence of a port settlement actively engaged in maritime trade between the 10th-13th centuries at the mouth of the Agusan River near Butuan Bay. The archaeological record further suggests that commercial activities ceased and the settlement declined after the 13th century. The purported decline and ‘mysterious disappearance’ of Butuan is disputed in part by a glorious description of the king of Butuan in the 16th century written by Italian chronicler Antonio Pigafetta, who accompanied Ferdinand Magellan in the Spanish expedition that arrived in the Philippines in 1521. This paper re-examines early accounts, documents, and related concepts in light of material evidence from Butuan and neighboring cultures to gain insight into early interregional connectivities.

About the Speaker

Florina H. Capistrano-Baker received the PhD, MPhil, and MA from the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University. She was formerly museum director of the Ayala Museum (Philippines) where she is currently consulting curator and special projects consultant. Since 2000, her research has focused on Philippine specificities within a metanarrative of global exchange between the 10th-13th and 16th-19th centuries. Her book Philippine Ancestral Gold (Ayala Foundation and NUS Press, 2011) documents previously unpublished material suggesting early trade with neighbors in the Indian Ocean and South China Sea. In 2015 she co-curated the exhibition “Philippine Gold: Treasures of Forgotten Kingdoms” at the Asia Society Museum in New York and authored the exhibition catalogue of the same title (Ayala Foundation and Asia Society, 2015). She is co-editor of the volume Transpacific Engagements: Trade, Translation, and Visual Culture of Entangled Empires, 1565-1898 (Ayala Foundation with the Getty Research Institute and Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, 2021). Her scholarly work has been supported by grants from Columbia University, Ford Foundation, Asian Cultural Council, American Association of University Women, Japan Foundation, Locsin Foundation, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Getty Research Institute.

Gatty Lecture Series

Join us for a talk by Van Nguyen Marshall, (Associate Professor of History at Trent University), who will discuss associational life in South Vietnam, 1954-1975.

This Gatty Lecture will take place at the Rockefeller Hall 374. Lunch will be served. For questions, contact seapgatty@cornell.edu.

About the Talk

In Between War and the State, Van Nguyen-Marshall examines an array of voluntary activities, including mutual-help, professional, charitable, community development, student, women's, and rights organizations active in South Vietnam from 1954 to 1975. By bringing focus to the public lives of South Vietnamese people, Between War and the State challenges persistent stereotypes of South Vietnam as a place without society or agency. Such robust associational life underscores how an active civil society survived despite difficulties imposed by the war, government restrictions, economic hardship, and external political forces. These competing political forces, which included the United States, Western aid agencies, and Vietnamese communist agents, created a highly competitive arena wherein the South Vietnamese state did not have a monopoly on persuasive or coercive power. To maintain its influence, the state sometimes needed to accommodate groups and limit its use of violence. Civil society participants in South Vietnam leveraged their social connections, made alliances, appealed to the domestic and international public, and used street protests to voice their concerns, secure their interests, and carry out their activities.

About the Speaker

Van Nguyen-Marshall is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Trent University with particular research interests in Modern Vietnamese History, focusing on associational life, civil society, and the Vietnam War. She is the author of In Search of Moral Authority: The Discourse on Poverty, Poor Relief, and Charity in French Colonial Vietnam (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2008) and the recently published Between War and the State: Vietnamese Voluntary Association in South Vietnam (1954-1975) (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2023).

Gatty Lecture Series

Join us for a talk by Van Nguyen Marshall, (Associate Professor of History, Trent University), who will discuss the public lives of South Vietnamese people, Between War and the State.

This Gatty Lecture will take place at the Rockefeller Hall 374. Lunch will be served. For questions, contact seapgatty@cornell.edu.

About the Talk

In Between War and the State, Van Nguyen-Marshall examines an array of voluntary activities, including mutual-help, professional, charitable, community development, student, women's, and rights organizations active in South Vietnam from 1954 to 1975. By bringing focus to the public lives of South Vietnamese people, Between War and the State challenges persistent stereotypes of South Vietnam as a place without society or agency. Such robust associational life underscores how an active civil society survived despite difficulties imposed by the war, government restrictions, economic hardship, and external political forces. These competing political forces, which included the United States, Western aid agencies, and Vietnamese communist agents, created a highly competitive arena wherein the South Vietnamese state did not have a monopoly on persuasive or coercive power. To maintain its influence, the state sometimes needed to accommodate groups and limit its use of violence. Civil society participants in South Vietnam leveraged their social connections, made alliances, appealed to the domestic and international public, and used street protests to voice their concerns, secure their interests, and carry out their activities.

About the Speaker

Van Nguyen-Marshall is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Trent University with particular research interests in Modern Vietnamese History, focusing on associational life, civil society, and the Vietnam War. She is the author of In Search of Moral Authority: The Discourse on Poverty, Poor Relief, and Charity in French Colonial Vietnam (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2008) and the recently published Between War and the State: Vietnamese Voluntary Association in South Vietnam (1954-1975) (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2023).