The College of Arts & Sciences will welcome alumni to campus June 8-11 with a host of events for Cornell Reunion 2023, celebrating the classes of 3s and 8s.
Alumni can register now at the Reunion website.
A&S highlights will include:
"The Climate Change Comedy Hour," a multi-media presentation by Aaron Sachs, professor of history and American studies. The…
The College of Arts & Sciences annually honors faculty members for excellence in teaching and advising. Among the faculty members and teaching assistants being recognized for exceptional teaching and mentorship this year are: Emily Fridlund, recipient of the 2023 Robert and Helen Appel Fellowship for Humanists and Social Scientists; Kendra Bischoff, recipient of the 2023 Robert A. and Donna B…
Nadir Ali
Students and faculty in Cornell’s fall 2022 Design Justice Workshop and Detroit Public School juniors enrolled in the University of Michigan Architecture Preparatory Program (ArcPrep) get a view of the Detroit skyline from Belle Isle Park.
From reimagining Harlem through the eyes of a poet to envisioning the future of Detroit together with residents, Cornell students explored creative ways to understand urban landscapes during two cross-disciplinary courses this year, part of Cornell's Mellon Collaborative Studies in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities (AUH).
Two graduate courses co-taught by faculty from the College of…
The pandemic upended the first year for the Class of 2023, but they made the most of their time, producing amazing research and creative works, developing lasting friendships and creating a litany of memories.
Explore the extraordinary journeys of this year’s graduates and see how their paths have prepared them not only for a successful and meaningful career, but also for a life well lived…
Patrick Shanahan
Eden Kebede '25 collects a soil sample in a forest outside Ithaca.
This summer, 101 students in the College of Arts and Sciences will take part in groundbreaking research on campus with 61 faculty as part of the Nexus Scholars Program.
For many of these students, this will be their first research opportunity and they’ll work on projects with faculty across the college – in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and mathematics. Nearly 320 students…
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Voters in the Thailand general election 2019
Nearly a decade after Prayut Chan-o-cha was installed as prime minister in a military coup, Thailand will hold an election on May 14 that pro-democracy watchers hope will bring about reforms.
Tamara Loos is a professor of history and Thai studies at Cornell University. While a repressive human rights climate and an underperforming economy have catalyzed sentiment against Prayut; Loos says…
During a drive around Fez, Morocco in 2022, Mardiya Shardow ’23 knew that her experiences that day were worth remembering. So as soon as she got back to her room, she wrote down everything she could remember.
This year, as she was creating her senior project as a student in the Humanities Scholar Program (HSP) in the College of Arts & Sciences, she vacillated between her ideas for a novel…
B. Saxon, NRAO/AUI/NSF
View of Green Bank’s 40-foot telescope from the front at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO)
An international team of researchers has revealed new evidence on the nature of mysterious fast radio bursts (FRBs) – objects in space that produce brief, intense flashes of radio waves from distant galaxies.
Astronomers from Cornell, West Virginia University, Caltech, Western Sydney University and CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, contributed to the study which shows, for the first…
Which came first, the democratic state or the will of the people?
In his book “The Founding of Modern States,” Richard F. Bensel, the Gary S. Davis Professor of Government in the College of Arts and Sciences, examines how six modern states – three democratic and three not – came to be.
By comparing Britain, the United States and France side-by-side with the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and…
Mayfest artistic directors Xak Bjerken, professor of music in the College of Arts and Sciences, and Miri Yampolsky welcome longtime friends and new collaborators for five world-class concerts May 19-23, featuring works from Mozart to Messiaen and Arensky to Weill.
Invited artists this year include five-time Grammy-winning soprano Dawn Upshaw; and violinist Roi Shiloah, who has performed as…
Defense Visual Information Distribution Service
An MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle parked on a taxiway at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada
Russia has accused Ukraine of launching drones targeting President Vladimir Putin. Kyiv has denied involvement and has suggested this could be used as a pretext for a new Russian attack inside Ukraine.
Paul Lushenko is a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, senior policy fellow at Cornell’s Tech Policy Lab, and co-editor of "Drones and Global Order: Implications of Remote Warfare for…
energy.gov
An aerial view of Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Matthew George Signorelli and Ningdong Wang, graduate students in the field of physics, are among the 87 students selected to receive the prestigious U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science Graduate Student Research Award (SCGSR) for the 2022 Solicitation 2 cycle. The fellowship provides world-class training and access to state-of-the-art facilities and resources at DOE…
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Sudan
Thousands of people are flocking to port cities in eastern Sudan in hopes of finding space on boats heading to Saudi Arabia in order to escape violence in the capital city of Khartoum.
Rachel Beatty Riedl, a scholar of Sub-Saharan Africa political systems, says a return to civilian-lead government in Sudan is imperative.
“The current conflict between rival military leaders in…
JÄNNICK Jérémy, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
Marine Le Pen at the Parliament of the Invisibles in Hénin-Beaumont on Sunday April 15, 2012.
May 1, otherwise known as “May Day”, or International Workers Day in Europe, is a day frequently marked by general strikes and demonstrations. This May Day in Paris will be the same—only much more so thanks to the unpopularity of President Macron’s move to raise France's retirement age from 62 to 64.
Mabel Berezin, professor of sociology in the College of Arts & Sciences…
The U.S. Senate is set to vote today on a measure that could allow the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to be added to the U.S. Constitution, a century after its introduction.
Riché Richardson, professor of African American literature and associate faculty member in the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Cornell University, says these changes are needed and long…
Five faculty from the College of Arts and Sciences were featured on a “Cornell week” on The Academic Minute radio program from May 1-5.
The show airs weekdays on 70 stations across the country, delving into topics from the serious to the light-hearted and keeping listeners abreast of what's new and exciting in research from the academy. The program is hosted by Lynn Pasquerella, president…
Provided
Students in the Milstein Program practice with each other before they conduct interviews with civic leaders.
Mia Desravines’ ’26 says her first year at Cornell has been “all about the ampersand.”
By that she means she’s had a chance to explore her interests in information science & Africana studies & technology & sociology & dance & the list goes on.
As a student in the Milstein Program in Technology & Humanity in the College of Arts and Sciences, Desravines also got…
The helm of the Ohio-class guided-missile submarine, USS Florida
The United States will deploy nuclear-armed submarines to South Korea for the first time in 40 years — part of a new agreement, signed Wednesday, and signaling Washington's commitment to defend Seoul against nuclear threats from North Korea.
David Silbey is an associate professor of history at Cornell University where he specializes in military history,…
MacArthur Fellow P. Gabrielle Foreman will give the annual Krieger Lecture in American Political Culture. Her talk, “Why Didn’t We Know?!: The Forgotten History of the Colored Conventions and 19th-Century Black Political Organizing,” will focus on the history of 19th century Black activism.
The lecture is scheduled to take place in-person on May 2 at 5 p.m. in Kaufmann Auditorium (G64) in…
Well-known for their vocal mimicry, parrots can articulate words, repeat phrases and sometimes even create their own sentences.
“This ability is very rare in animals,” said Zhilei Zhao, Klarman Fellow in neurobiology and behavior in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S). “Very few animals can do this, including dolphins, some whales and some birds. I’m trying to understand how this is…
Daniela Paola Alchapar/Unsplash
Colorful tropical garden in the Caribbean
Alumna Hannah Cole, who received her Ph.D. in the field of comparative literature in 2020, has been awarded this year’s Charles Bernheimer Prize for her dissertation, “A Thorny Way of Thinking: Botanical Afterlives of Caribbean Plantation Slavery.” The prize, given annually by the American Comparative Literature Association for the best dissertation in comparative literature, includes a $1,000…
Provided
Behind the scenes of “We Love We Self Up Here.” Cornell students Austin Lillywhite (left) and Afifa Ltifi (slightly visible besides) with filmmaker Kannan Arunasalam.
The Award for Film and Video from the Society of Architectural Historians has been given to the film “We Love We Self Up Here,” produced by Natalie Melas, associate professor of comparative literature in the College of Arts and Sciences and Tao DuFour, assistant professor of architecture in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning. The documentary short was directed by…
Anthony Lopardo
Students Kevin Souhrada and Lindsay Manos drag lobster traps away from the shoreline on Cuttyhunk Island in Massachusetts.
Isaac Newcomb ’23 spent his spring break on a Massachusetts island, dismantling hundreds of discarded lobster traps, collecting sounds of the island and deepening his understanding of human impacts on marine life.
“I gained a visceral understanding of the waste that lingers in the ocean, found a community determined to enact change and captured an indescribable feeling through the sounds of…
The extraordinary life of Captain Francisco Menéndez stretched from the coasts of West Africa to South Carolina and the Caribbean. In this year's Carl Becker Lecture Series, Jane Landers will take the audience through his journeys in three lectures titled "Atlantic Transformations: The Many Lives of Captain Francisco Menendez and his 'Subjects.’" The talks, which are free and open to the public,…
Cornell Department of Music’s Chorus, Glee Club, and Symphony Orchestra
The Cornell Department of Music’s Chorus, Glee Club, and Symphony Orchestra collaborate for this year’s Major Works concert on Saturday, April 29 at 7:30 pm in Bailey Hall.
Led by Guillaume Pirard, CSO conductor, and Joe Lerangis, the Priscilla E. Browning Director of Choral Music in the College of Arts and Sciences, the performance will include Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony…
Sixteen scholars have spent this year reflecting on and reimagining the theme of “Repair” as part of their fellowship at the Society for the Humanities. The year of Repair concludes with the Society’s annual Fellows’ research conference on April 27 and 28.
The two-day conference will include two invited keynote lectures as well as multiple panels featuring Society Fellows who will…
President Biden announced that his administration is expanding access to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance exchanges to immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children, allowing participants in the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA) to access government-funded health insurance programs.
Jamila Michener, associate professor of government…
Franz Mahr/World Bank
World Bank Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
World Bank shareholders are gathered in Washington this week for their annual spring meetings, while the global financial institution is poised for new leadership that could change how it approaches climate and other global crises. Business executive Ajay Banga is expected to be confirmed as the bank’s president in the coming weeks.
Richard T. Clark is a political scientist who studies…
Chris Kitchen
Students in the Monuments, Museums and Memory class view work at the Johnson Museum during a class trip.
Students interested in the way history is reflected in monuments, memorials, museum exhibitions, oral histories and in other ways can now sign up to minor in public history.
The new minor, which became available last fall through the history department, involves a core course, “Monuments, Museums and Memory,” taught this semester by Stephen Vider, assistant professor of history and director of…
K. Mitch Hodge/Unsplash
Belfast City Hall, Donegall Square, Belfast
President Joe Biden has departed on a four-day trip to Ireland. The timing of the trip coincides with the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, which ended 30 years of conflict in Northern Ireland. The British intelligence service recently raised the terrorism threat level in Northern Ireland from “substantial” to “severe.”
Anil Menon is a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell…
A pipe organ or an electric guitar: which would you expect – or want – to hear in a church service?
This question mattered a lot to many mainline churches around the turn of the millennium, according to music scholar Deborah Justice, contributing to the so-called Worship Wars, intense aesthetic and theological controversies running through much of white Christian America.
In “(White…
Andrea Kane/Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ
David Nirenberg
History can help make us aware of patterns in our thinking about the world, of prejudices and habits of thought. In a lecture on Thursday, April 20, titled “How Can History Help us? The Example of Anti-Semitism,” David Nirenberg, the director and Leon Levy Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, NJ, draws upon the long history of anti-semitism in order to ask how that…
In Qing Dynasty China (1644-1911), laws favored parents over children – for a political purpose, according to Mara Yue Du, assistant professor of history in the College of Arts and Sciences. Take the case of Wang Dacai, which opens her book “State and Family in China: Filial Piety and its Modern Reform.”
In 1815, a son’s slight injury to his father was deemed a “violation of fundamental…
The U.S. government was left scrambling over the weekend when dozens of highly-classified intelligence documents were posted on the internet. The files included details on U.S. spying operations in Russia, as well as against key allies, including South Korea, Israel and Ukraine.
David Silbey is an associate professor of history at Cornell University where he specializes in military history,…
Clay LeConey/Unsplash
New York City's upper east side
Since sociologist Cristobal Young published “The Myth of Millionaire Tax Flight: How Place Still Matters for the Rich” in 2017, countless media outlets have quoted him and cited his work, such as a recent Washington Post article. But little did he expect that his work would one day be the focus of a comedic political video getting thousands of views.
Created by video…
When you raise your foot and take a first step, you don’t have to think “right, then left, then right.” Neural circuits in your brainstem give a general command to start the movement, and circuits in your spinal cord translate that command into a precise motor pattern. Understanding the patterns of activity that allow us to move from place to place can unveil fundamental principles of how…
Chris Kitchen
Austin Bunn, associate professor in performing and media arts, left, talks with Scott Ferguson, middle, and MIchael Kantor, right.
Follow your curiosities — and your passions — as you make your way through life, and things will turn out just fine.
That was a common theme shared by two visiting alumni filmmakers during a March 28-29 visit to campus, as well as by Dr. Anthony Fauci and actor Nicholas Braun, who joined the events by Zoom and who were featured in the pairs’ most recent films.
“From the Big Red to the Red…
Vincent Brown, the Charles Warren Professor of American History and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, will deliver this year’s Reuben A. and Cheryl Casselberry Munday Distinguished Lecture April 17.
Brown’s talk, "Black History's Warning to the World," will take place from 5-6:30 p.m. April 17 in Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium of Klarman Hall. A reception…
Nita Farahany, a scholar who focuses on ethical, legal, and social implications of emerging technologies, will be the featured speaker for an April 12 event hosted by the Milstein Program in Technology & Humanity.
During “The Battle for Your Brain: Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology,” Farahany will discuss her new book of the same title, which explores the…
The UK’s data privacy watchdog has fined TikTok $15.9 million for data violations including the use of children’s data without parental consent. This is the latest example of tighter scrutiny TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance are facing in the West as governments are concerned about risks that the app poses to data privacy and cybersecurity.
Sarah Kreps is a professor…
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A high altitude research balloon, launching in 2015
U.S. officials have confirmed that a Chinese high-altitude balloon was able to gather intelligence from U.S. military sites and send the data back to Beijing, according to multiple media outlets.
Paul Lushenko is a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army and a senior policy fellow at Cornell University’s Tech Policy Lab. He says the revelation suggests several considerations for the…
Daderot/Creative Commons license 1.0
Wiscosin state capitol building, state Supreme Court entrance
Control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and likely the future of abortion access, will be determined in a state election on Tuesday.
Glenn Altschuler, professor of American studies at Cornell University, says this race will not only affect the future of abortion and gerrymandering, but also shed key insight into constituent sentiment around judicial candidates explicitly sharing views on…
A new book by linguist Michael Weiss provides the first pedagogical grammar ever compiled for Tocharian B, an ancient Indo-European language that was spoken and written in parts of what is now the Tarim Basin of western China.
The texts that Weiss, a professor in the Department of Linguistics in the College of Arts and Sciences, used as the basis for his grammar, “Kuśiññe Kantwo: Elementary…
As the nation awaits the details of the indictment of former president Donald Trump, many Americans are left wondering what the aftermath will look like.
David Bateman, professor of government and policy in the College of Arts and Sciences and expert on democratic institutions, says the country could face enormous consequences if the former president is later nominated as the Republican front…
The Cornell Department of Music welcomes chamber group loadbang for their second visit to campus as the Steven Stucky Memorial Residency for New Music ensemble. Their performance on Saturday, April 15 at 7:30 pm in Barnes Hall will feature world premieres of new works by Cornell composers Laura Cetilia, Coral Douglas, Seare Farhat, and Matias de Roux.
During their fall 2022 visit to Cornell,…
Official photo by Makoto Lin/Office of the President. Creative Commons license 2.0
Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen in 2021
Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen has arrived in the United States for a highly-sensitive diplomatic stopover. Despite the fact that Tsai has passed through the U.S. multiple times since taking office in 2016, Beijing has warned that the trip could have a ‘severe impact’ on US-China relations.
Allen Carlson is an associate professor of government at Cornell University and an expert on…
Viktor Borinets/Ministry of Defense, Ukraine
Soldier at the Battle of Bakhmut, Nov. 2022
For seven months, Russian forces have been fighting to capture Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine. Much of the city has been destroyed and both sides have endured severe losses, leading some Western analysts to question whether holding the city was worth the cost.
David Silbey is an associate professor of history at Cornell University where he specializes in military history, defense policy and…
As the polarization in the U.S. grows ever deeper, a hot debate rages over whether the media are helping or worsening the divide. In “Transcending Echo Chambers: Polarization and the Media,” distinguished alumni and Cornell faculty will explore the media’s role and what can be done.
The panel, on April 19, 7 p.m. in Rhodes-Rawling Auditorium in Klarman Hall, is free and the public is invited…
Every semester — and over the summer — Cornellians have the opportunity to take courses and complete an internship in Washington, D.C. through the Cornell in Washington program, which is part of the Brooks School of Public Policy. Many students in the program come from the College of Arts & Sciences.
During the fall and spring semesters, students take a core course and two to three…
