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ICM NEW CONVERSATION
TEJASVI NAGARAJA (Assistant Professor of Labor History, ILR School, Cornell University)
"The Work of Internationalism: Labor and Black Solidarity in Global War"
Wednesday, November 20, 2024
4:45 p.m.—6:15 p.m.
POSTPONED: ICM LECTURE
SAMERA ESMEIR (Associate Professor, Department of Rhetoric, UC Berkeley)
THE SCHEDULED DATE OF THIS LECTURE, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2024, IS POSTPONED UNTIL THE SPRING SEMESTER.
"Territorial Imperatives, Revolutionary Leanings: Thinking with the Palestinian Revolution"
Monday, November 4, 2024 | 4:45 p.m. — 6:15 p.m.
A.D. White House, Guerlac Room
ICM NEW CONVERSATION
SEEMA GOLESTENAH (Associate Professor, Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University)
Poetry, Jihad, and the Communal Self in Afghan Resistance Literature of the 1980s and 1990s
Monday, October 21, 2024
Guerlac Room, A.D. White House
4:45 p.m. —6:15 p.m.
Nathan Thrall will talk about his most recent book, “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy.”
A screening of the film Angela Davis: A World of Greater Freedom (2023) followed by a conversation with filmmaker Manthia Diawara and Salah M. Hassan.
Thursday, October 4, 2024
Cornell Cinema, 104 Willard Straight Hall
4:45 p.m.
Angela Davis: A World of Greater Freedom (2023) by Manthia Diawara reflects on the life and work of the North American activist Angela Davis. Diawara’s camera follows Davis as she walks through a forest of giant sequoias, works in the garden or walks her dog, while reflecting on myriad issues, including ideas of freedom, resistance, rebellion, remaking our world, political blackness, radical black thought, music, (inter)nationalism, (Global South) feminism, abolition, the industrial prison complex, generational shifts, dialectics, contradiction, Africa, sexuality, desire and also friendship. The film is neither a biography nor a fictional narrative. Instead, Diawara’s footage, which is interspersed with relevant archival material, presents itself as a poetic compendium of Davis’s critical thinking and an inspiration for new imaginaries and new relations within an emergent new world.
POSSIBLE LANDSCAPES PROJECT
Mario Lewis, an artist and agriculturalist practicing in Trinidad and Berlin, is one of several Trinidadian collaborators in the documentary film project making its debut at Cornell Cinema on Wednesday, September 25. On Wednesday September 25, just before the debut screening at Cornell Cinema, Mario Lewis will give an artist talk at Toboggan Lodge, with a micro exhibit of selected works connected to his talk.
More details about Possible Landscapes screening:
https://events.cornell.edu/event/possible-landscapes-world-premiere-screening
More details about Possible Landscapes project:
https://as.cornell.edu/news/professors-feature-length-documentary-film-debuts-cornell-cinema
POSSIBLE LANDSCAPES --DEBUT SCREENING
Cornell Cinema, 104 Willard Straight Hall
Wednesday, September 25, 2024
7:00 p.m.
Directed by Kannan Arunasalam
Produced and conceptualized by Tao DuFour and Natalie Melas
"For no one had yet written of this landscape
that it was possible.”
Derek Walcott
A collaboration between a documentary filmmaker, Kanan Arunasalam and two professors, Tao DuFour (Architecture) a spatial theorist and Natalie Melas (Comparative Literature) a postcolonial comparatist and scholar of Caribbean thought, Possible Landscapes is the outcome of the team research project, “Possible Landscapes: Documenting Environmental Experience in Trinidad and Tobago,” funded through the Cornell Migrations Initiative team research grant for the Mellon Just Futures Initiative. The aim was to develop methods of field research and representation in documentary film that foreground intergenerational lived experience of landscapes and environments in the Caribbean islands of Trinidad and Tobago, and to query the formation of environmental and climate imaginaries, with a view to getting at larger historical questions—of migration, plantation societies, extractivism, race, and the legacies of colonialism—that inform everyday practices in ways that are difficult to identify and to articulate, because they are concretely lived.
Sagal Farah, "Where We Leave Things"
ICM New Conversation
Literatures in English Lounge, Goldwin Smith 258
12:00 p.m. — 1:15 p.m.
“Possible Landscapes,” a new feature-length documentary film exploring the lived experience of landscapes and environments in the Caribbean islands of Trinidad and Tobago, will have its debut screening on Sept. 25 at Cornell Cinema.
The Institute for Comparative Modernities is pleased to announce the 2024 Fall Events Series, a range of engaging hosted events featuring film screenings, co-sponsored conferences and talks; conversations from Cornell faculty members and guest speakers about recent work, and lectures about ongoing critical research and practice.
Coming from the University of Toronto, where he is the director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, Loewen begins his five-year appointment as the Harold Tanner Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Aug. 1.
The exhibition opened at the Sharjah Art Foundation 18 Nov 2023–10 Mar 2024, and will travel to the Whitechapel Gallery, London, 12 Jun – 1 Sep 2024.
Organized by Whitechapel Gallery and Sharjah Art Foundation, in collaboration with The Africa Institute, Sharjah.
Following their co-taught Mellon seminar, Cornell faculty Akcan and Dadi announce the release of their edited volume of essays on the art and architecture of partitions, migrations, arrivals, experiences, and global conditions from the 20th century to the present.
ICM LECTURE SERIES
Beshara Doumani, "A Modern History of the Palestinians Through the Social Life of Stone"
Monday, May 6, 2024
Goldwin Smith Hall 64 | Kaufmann Auditorium
4:45 p.m—6:15 p.m.
A screening of Jole Dobe Na / Those Who Do Not Drown (2020) followed by a conversation with filmmaker Naeem Mohaiemen.
Thursday, March 28, 2024
4:45 p.m. — 6:30 p.m.
Cornell Cinema | 104 Willard Straight Hall
ICM New Conversations Series
BEGÜM ADALET (Cornell University)
INSURGENT MOOD
Tuesday, November 7, 2023, 4:45 p.m. – 6:15 p.m.
Toboggan Lodge, 38 Forest Home Drive
k, Maghreb Noir: The Militant-Artists of North Africa and the Struggle for a Pan-African, Postcolonial Future
ICM NEW BOOKS SERIES
PARASKA TOLAN-SZKILNIK
Maghreb Noir: The Militant-Artists of North Africa and the Struggle for a Pan-African, Postcolonial Future
Wednesday, November 1, 2023
ICM NEW CONVERSATIONS SERIES
OUMAR BA
“Rethinking Liberal Internationalism: Imperialism, Pacification, Humanity”
Wednesday, October 25, 2023, 5:00 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.
A.D. White House, Guerlac Room
A zoom link is provided for the extenuating circumstances of those who cannot attend in person, but the quality of the image and sound cannot be guaranteed.
ICM LECTURE SERIES
JODI BYRD
Monday, October 2, 2023, 4:45 p.m —6:15 p.m.
Goldwin Smith Hall, G22
ICM LECTURE SERIES
RINALDO WALCOTT
On Property, After Reparations, Towards RepairMonday, October 2, 2023 at 4:45pm to 6:15pm
Goldwin Smith Hall, G22
232 East Ave, Central Campus
A Conference Sponsored by the Department of Asian Studies and the Institute for Comparative Modernities, Cornell University
Friday, September 22 – Saturday, September 23, 2023
The conference proposes that what is taken for granted today as national or ethnic language, in the sense of “la langue,” came into existence in the world in modernity, that is, the world as it was gradually organized according to the basic schema of internationality instituted in Europe from the 16th to 19th centuries. Initially this understanding of an “international world” was limited to a special region called Europe, but as the territorial states in Europe moved into non-European regions and conquered their lands, the Eurocentric structure of the international world gained global dominance. Gradually, all the land surface of the earth came to be organized by the bipolarity of Europe (also called “the West” since the end of the 19th century) and the Rest. Thanks to the pioneering work of Cécile Canut (Provincialiser la langue, Edition Amsterdam, 2021), Jon Solomon (Spectral Translation), and Naoki Sakai (Voices of the Past) we now understand that the notion of la langue is closely associated with the colonial internationality of the modern world. Our attempts to seek national languages everywhere as the sign of indigenous cultural and political autonomy is, in fact, a continuation of the colonial imposition of the Eurocentric norm on colonial populations. Hence, Canut’s appeal for ‘provincializing Europe’ challenges the established modality of knowledge production about the Rest, particularly in area studies.
We Love We Self Up Here, a documentary produced by ICM board member Natalie Melas and Cornell AAP faculty Tao Dufour, won the 2023 SAH Award for Film and Video.
Rahaab Allana visits Cornell on April 17, 2023 to speak on "The South Asian Imaginary: Exploring the region through image-making practices"
Cornell graduate students from across the university are invited to apply for graduate reading group awards to fund and support interdisciplinary and collaborative research working groups.
This two-day conference, co-organized by ICM, the Einaudi Center for International Studies, and the Polson Institute for Global Development, brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars conducting innovative research on the topic of racial capitalism across the globe.
ICM SYMPOSIUM SERIES SPRING 2023
“Reparations for Colonization/Carbonization”
Friday, March 3, 2023
A.D. White House, Room 110
10:00 a.m —5:30 p.m.
Given the intertwined history of industrial capitalism, extraction and colonialism, this symposium will explore the pending reparations to their victims from a multidisciplinary perspective. Acknowledging the accountability of the first industrializing countries of the Global North to the previously colonized countries of the Global South, the symposium will address the importance of material and moral reparations in bringing justice to the residual inequalities caused by slavery and racism, environmental extraction and pollution. The intention is to explore the intersections between colonialism and climate change, de-colonization and de-carbonization, transitional justice and energy transition.
This symposium will continue the discussion from the “Repair and Reparations” panel series organized by Esra Akcan as director of the Institute for European Studies, at the Einaudi Center for International Studies at Cornell. Information and links to the recordings of the panels are included below.
ICM New Books Series Spring 2023
IFTIKHAR DADI
Lahore Cinema: Between Realism and Fable
Wednesday, March 1, 2023, 4:45 p.m —6:15 p.m.
Goldwin Smith Hall, G22
With about 70 students on campus from Syria and Turkey affected by the devastation in their countries, students, faculty and administrators have mobilized to create relief efforts.
ICM LECTURE SERIES SPRING 2023
Monday, February 20, 2022 at 4:45pm to 6:15pm
Goldwin Smith Hall G22
ERNESTO BASSI
Associate Professor, Department of History Cornell University
Director, Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program
"Plantation Dreams: Global Connections and Disconnections From South America's Caribbean Shores"
ICM EVENTS SERIES SPRING 2023
Saturday, February 11, 2023
10:45 a.m.–12:45 a.m Eastern/New York
ONLINE
REGISTER HERE:
https://cornell.zoom.us/j/91538163732?pwd=RlBFWXVxdlpZb0hxS2NWay9Na0FrQT09
The Institute for Comparative Modernities is pleased to announce the 2023 Spring Event Series, a range of engaging hosted events featuring conversations from Cornell faculty members and guest speakers about recent publications, and lectures about ongoing critical research and practice. ICM is additionally hosting symposia featuring award-winning translators of texts from the Global South, panel discussions on Reparations for Colonization/Carbonization, and a two-day conference on the topic of Racial Capitalism across the globe.
ICM NEW CONVERSATIONS SERIES SPRING 2023
Wednesday, February 1, 2023
4:45 p.m. —6:15p.m.
MOSTAFA MINAWI AND DURBA GHOSH
"Describing Difference and Inscribing Race: The Case of the Late Ottoman Empire"
A Conversation about Minawi's recent book, Losing Istanbul
The Africa Institute, directed by ICM's Salah Hassan, opens the third edition of the annual country-focused season highlighting Africa's Indian Ocean Islands on December 15, 2022
Mostafa Minawi gives the reader a street-level understanding of what it was like to live through the final decades of the Ottoman Empire.
ICM Fall 2022 Visiting Scholar Event
Tuesday, November 29, 2022, 4:45 p.m.—6:15 p.m.
BERIN F. GÜR
"Political Misuse, Conquest and Hagia Sophia in Istanbul”
Toboggan Lodge, 38 Forest Home Drive
Kamala Ibrahim Ishag has forged a unique and expansive practice that is not defined by a singular style or movement.
Pop South Asia: Artistic Explorations in the Popular is one of the first major exhibitions to provide a substantial survey of modern and contemporary art from South Asia engaging with popular culture.
ICM Fall 2022 New Conversations Series
Tuesday, November 1, 2022, 4:45 p.m. —6:15 p.m.
ROBERT TRAVERS
"Colonial State-Building in a Persianate World: Mughal Law and the Making of British India"
A.D. White House, Guerlac Room
ICM Fall 2022
Lecture Series
KHALID MUSTAFA MEDANI, "The Great Transformation in the Middle East and Africa: Globalization, (In)formal Markets and the Politics of Identity"
The final installment of ICM's special series, "Settler Colonialism, Sovereignty, Apartheid," with Eric Cheyfitz, Eman Ghanayem, and Robert Warrior in discussion about settler colonialism and the comparative context of Palestine and Indigenous North America.
The summer 2022 issue of Dissent magazine features ICM board member and Cornell Law faculty Aziz Rana’s article “Left Internationalism in the Heart of Empire,” followed by responses by Patrick Iber, Adom Getachew, Stephen Wertheim, Aslı Bâli, Susie Linfield, Ramzi Kassem, and Darryl Li.
The Institute for Comparative Modernities is pleased to announce that board member Esra Akcan will be the new Resident Director, replacing outgoing ICM Resident Director Iftikhar Dadi, who will remain on the ICM board. The new appointment will begin July 1, 2022. Professor Akcan joined the ICM board at the beginning of 2020, when she was...
Migrations: A Global Grand Challenge, part of Global Cornell, has awarded grants totaling more than $500,000 to support faculty research addressing wide-ranging questions around domestic and global migration.Funded projects this cycle reflect the Migrations initiative’s interdisciplinary priorities of racism, dispossession and migration in the...
On April 9, 2022, BBC World Service broadcasted this compelling story about art and politics in contemporary Sudan, with an overview by the ICM founding director Salah M. Hassan. From the BBC's The Cultural Frontline website:Despite Sudan once being at the forefront of African cinema, only eight feature films have been made in the last 70 years...
On Cornell’s eighth Giving Day, held March 16, 15,905 alumni, students, faculty, staff, parents and friends from more than 80 countries made gifts totaling a record-breaking $12,268,629.
The Institute for Comparative Modernites is delighted to announce the recipients of the 2021-22 Global South Translation Fellowships, grants of up to $5000 to complete translations of works from the Global South (Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, etc) into English. This is a non-resident, remote fellowship designed to allow the...
"Empire’s Province Into National City: Architecture and the Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire" This two-day event convenes recent scholarship and works-in-progress on the transformation of Ottoman province centers into national capitals/cities during the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the broader transformations in the region, such as...
ICM Faculty Fouad Makki, Iftikhar Dadi, and Salah Hassan present at the March Meeting, Sharjah Art Foundation, March 5–7, 2022The 14th edition of March Meeting, Sharjah Art Foundation’s annual convening of artists, curators and art practitioners to explore critical issues in contemporary art through panels, lectures and performances, takes place ...
Gifts allow the College to fulfill its mission: preparing students to do the greatest good in the world.
ICM Spring Events 2022
New Books Series
Wednesday, April 20, 2022
4:45-6:15 p.m. Goldwin Smith, G22
Esra Akcan, Abolish Human Bans: Intertwined Histories of Architecture
Cornell AAP faculty member Esra Akcan speaks about her recently published book, Abolish Human Bans: Intertwined...