Community College Workshop Examines Concept of Diaspora
On February 5, the Cornell-SU
South Asia consortium and the Cornell’s Southeast Asia Program held “Cultural
Flows in Space and Time: Reimagining Asian Diaspora,” a workshop for community
college faculty at Cornell University. This workshop provided community college
faculty to engage with and incorporate ideas of diaspora and cultural flows
into their teaching and research. In particular, the workshop theme sought to
challenge traditional spatial definitions of diaspora, which often fail to take
into account temporality and cultural flows that develop, often anachronistically,
alongside or independent from diaspora.
Workshop participants heard
three presentations that considered diaspora in different ways, and they had
the opportunity to discuss cultural flows across Asia and their diasporic
connections through time and space. The workshop included opening remarks by
Eric Tagliacozzo, Professor of History at Cornell, and presentations by
Cornell’s Southeast Asia Program Director Kaya McGowan, Senior Lecturer in
Music at Cornell, Christopher J. Miller, and SAC faculty member, Joanne Punzo
Waghorne. Joanne discussed her work in Singapore and how the practice of
guru-centered Hinduism movements creates new spaces and places of religiosity.
The workshop included faculty from nine community colleges,
including Onondaga Community College, and from SUNY Cortland. The feedback from
the faculty members who attended commented on the way the speakers helped them
think about issues of cultural flows and migration of ideas in new ways. This
workshop continues the South Asia Consortium’s ongoing collaboration with
community colleges with the goal of internationalizing the curriculum.