Join the Asian American Initiative for a book reading by Michael Luo in conversation with Kat Chow, with welcoming remarks by Qin Gao, Acting Director of the Asian American Initiative. Register here.
5:00pm Check-in
5:30pm Program Begins
6:45pm Reception
The Asian American Initiative at Columbia University is focused on making the experiences of Asian Americans central to our understanding of America. The goals of the initiative are to use evidenced-based research to drive change in our public narratives, and to forge a greater sense of belonging and pride for and among Asian Americans.
Interested in publishing, children’s literature, colonialism or art repatriation?
Join us in celebrating the launch of Theft of the Ruby Lotus with author SAYANTANI DASGUPTA (Narrative Medicine, Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, Institute for the Study of Comparative Literature) in conversation with RIKA BURNHAM (Narrative Medicine). We’ll be taking a virtual tour of the Metropolitan Museum, doing a literary read-aloud, and discussing the similarities between museums, hospitals and novels! Refreshments will be served.
No RSVP required. Organized by the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, Institute for the Study of Comparative Literature, and Narrative Medicine Program at Columbia University.
Benjamin Balthaser (Indiana University South Bend) on Citizens of the Whole World: Anti-Zionism and the Cultures of the American Jewish Left (2025), in dialogue with Benjamin Ratskoff (Occidental College). Moderated by Sonali Thakkar (New York University).
Benjamin Balthaser is an associate professor of multiethnic US Literature at Indiana University, South Bend. His scholarship, teaching, and creative work investigates the relationships among social movements, racial identity, and cultural production. He is the author of Anti-Imperialist Modernism: Race and Transnational Radical Culture from the Great Depression to the Cold War (2015) and a collection of poems, Dedication (2011). His most recent book, Citizens of the Whole World: Anti-Zionism and the Cultures of the American Jewish Left, was published by Verso Books in 2025.
Benjamin Ratskoff is an assistant professor of Critical Theory and Social Justice at Occidental College. His current research interrogates the politics of Holocaust memory and representation and the relationship between antisemitism, colonialism and white supremacy.
Information regarding campus access for non-Columbia affiliates will be sent prior to the event. This event will be in person only. Please contact cumemory@gmail.com if you have any questions.
There will be an optional dinner at Faculty House before this event at 5:30pm. The full-course dinner costs $30 per guest for non-students and $20 for students. Attendees can pay in advance using this form, or on the day of the meeting by check. Checks should be made payable to “Columbia University,” and the following should be written on the memo line: “[Cultural Memory] FH Meal.” It is a full-course dinner buffet with white and red wine, soft drinks, dessert, and coffee/tea. Advance registration is required.
The symposium brings together scholars working across and beyond Middle East and North Africa studies to explore how discursive fields are constituted, and to ask what becomes possible when we read across and against established disciplinary and regional boundaries. Rather than simply juxtaposing area studies frameworks (e.g., Syria or Palestine), we aim to theorize “the regional” anew. This conversation began as an exchange around Syro-Palestine, reflecting on how regional fields—particularly those of Lebanon, Turkey, Tunisia, and Algeria—have been positioned in relation to the Question of Palestine. This positioning has tended to circumscribe the terrain of inquiry, foreclosing other narratives, epistemologies, and questions. Our symposium aims to explore a conceptual vocabulary that resists colonial inheritances and disciplinary segmentation, and that reimagines scholarly methods through forms of relation not yet captured by dominant frameworks.
The two-day program includes a Thursday evening keynote panel featuring four speakers, open to the public and the Columbia community, followed by three closed-door sessions on Friday with a cohort of invited scholars.
SYMPOSIUM CO-ORGANIZERS:
- Aamer Ibraheem, Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis, and a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University.
- Adrien Zakar, Assistant Professor of Middle East Studies and the History of Science and Technology, University of Toronto
- Esmat Elhalaby, Assistant Professor in History, University of Toronto
- Iheb Guermazi, The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University
Join the Asian American Initiative for a conversation with author Ted Chiang and Professor Denise Cruz, Columbia University. Register here.
5:30pm Check-in
6:00pm Program Begins
7:00pm Reception
The Asian American Initiative at Columbia University is focused on making the experiences of Asian Americans central to our understanding of America. The goals of the initiative are to use evidenced-based research to drive change in our public narratives, and to forge a greater sense of belonging and pride for and among Asian Americans.
A special evening of literature, culture, and community at Casa Hispánica with New York Times Bestselling Author and Pulitzer Prize finalist Xochitl González to celebrate and discuss her newest novel, Last Night in Brooklyn.
Hosted by Dr. Nick J. Figueroa from the Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures, the Hispanic Institute, and the Latinos Urbanos Book Club, this intimate event brings together readers, book lovers, and the community for an engaging discussion with one of the most exciting literary voices writing today.
A proud Brooklyn native, Xochitl is the acclaimed author of Olga Dies Dreaming and Anita de Monte Laughs Last, works celebrated by The New York Times, TIME, NPR, and The Washington Post. In addition to her fiction, she is a staff writer for The Atlantic, where her cultural commentary earned her recognition as a Pulitzer Prize finalist in Commentary.
Her newest novel, Last Night in Brooklyn, continues her powerful exploration of identity, family, ambition, and the complexities of contemporary life – set against the vibrant backdrop of New York City.
Register Here For FREE = https://XochitlAtColumbia.eventbrite.com
David Henry Hwang has a prolific career in theatre, television, and opera, from his Tony Award-winning play M. Butterfly to his most recent opera, The Monkey King, and his new rewrite of the book of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Flower Drum Song. Fresh off the premiere of this new piece in Los Angeles, Hwang sits down with Heidi Kim, a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at UNC Chapel Hill, to discuss his work and his assessment of the artistic direction and economic needs of the arts in the United States today.
David Henry Hwang, Professor of Theatre Arts in the School of the Arts, is best known as the author of M. Butterfly, which won the 1988 Tony, Drama Desk, John Gassner, and Outer Critics Circle Awards, and was a Finalist for the 1989 Pulitzer Prize. He also sits on the Council of the Dramatists Guild and is a Professor of Theatre at Columbia University School of the Arts. Prof. Hwang is a Tony Award winner and three-time nominee, a Grammy Award winner who has been twice nominated, a three-time OBIE Award winner.
Heidi Kim, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, served as the founding director of the Asian American Center. Works in progress include Asian American Literature: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press) and Beyond Reparations, a study of the cultural and political history of American governmental apology and repair.
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Presented by the Center for American Studies and the Asian American Initiative at Columbia University. Register here.
From the Barnard Center for Research on Women (BCRW): Why AI Needs Feminism brings together feminist critical technologists Lauren Klein (Emory University) and Meredith Broussard (NYU) with Barnard’s Saima Akhtar (Vagelos Computational Science Center) and Gabrielle Gutierrez (Neuroscience) to examine how algorithmic surveillance is reshaping everyday life—from predictive policing in New York neighborhoods of color to the data infrastructures sustaining global conflicts and occupations. This conversation challenges the myth of “data-driven decision-making” as neutral progress and asks how feminist approaches grounded in care and accountability can offer paths toward refusal and repair.
Across higher education, including at Barnard, the rapid adoption of AI reflects wider struggles over power and control. “Smart” campus security systems and learning analytics promise efficiency and personalization while quietly expanding surveillance of movement, behavior, and intellectual labor. While AI can support learning and connection, it is also worth discussing how it reinforces existing hierarchies or privileges efficiency over care, trust, and human judgment.
The feminism AI needs, we insist, is not the mainstream feminism of representation or inclusion alone, but one that confronts how race, class, gender, and colonial power are built into technological systems. We ask: Who designs and benefits from these systems? Who bears their risks? And what would it mean to build technologies guided by care rather than oversight and control?
This event invites collective critique and imagination—toward technologies and institutions that center people, not just data.
This event is free and open to the public. Registration is required. A light reception will follow the conversation.
