Columns

CHOUNG | South Korea During Winter Break

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This winter break, I had the privilege to travel to South Korea for two weeks. It was my first time traveling internationally alone and my two weeks abroad has redefined education for me. I booked the tickets back in September and debated  over traveling for months. I was wondering if it was worth the time, money, and effort to travel to Korea, especially since I was traveling by myself. It has been six years since I last visited Korea and it was nerve racking to think about exploring a foreign country without the help of others. I worked throughout the summer before my freshman year and saved up enough money to book my tickets. I kept my eyes on ticket prices and snatched up the cheapest tickets possible. I spent weeks practicing Korean with my parents and went over how to travel by subway and bus routes. I also practiced simple Korean phrases that are useful in any situation, and gathered up gifts for my relatives. Before I knew it, it was time to leave. 

American Culture

The Rise and Decline of Black Bands in American Popular Music with Dr. Scot Brown

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On Nov. 10 at 4:30 p.m., Dr. Scot Brown, professor in African American studies at UCLA, will present his work in a discussion titled “The Rise and Decline of Black Bands in Popular Music in the 1970s.”

This event will be held in partnership with the Department of Music, Institute for African Development, Department of History, the Cornell Hip Hop Collection and the African Studies and Research Center. Taking place in the Africana Research and Studies Center, Brown will be discussing his research on the confounding factors that contributed to the decline of the popularity of Black music throughout the 1980s. “African American bands’ experiences in popular music were not driven solely by shifting consumer tastes,” Brown said. “But also by underlying contextual and structural issues such as the Black entrepreneurial and professional activism and cultural politics of race.”

Brown’s research has spanned over nearly two decades and has produced papers, books and music pieces under the alias Scotronixx.

Arts & Culture

SPOTLIGHT | Sabrina Haertig

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“Es Lo Que Tenemos” was a powerful experience, intertwining social issues like immigration with a reckoning of her cultural identities as a Dominican and German woman.

Dining

Corned Beef Contains No Corn, and Other Things You Didn’t Know About Irish Food

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Your life changes the day you realize that “sweetmeats” are actually pastries, “mincemeat” can refer to dried fruit cooked into a pie and ordering a plate of “sweetbreads” will get you a tasty calf pancreas. Misnomers like these just make you trust the world a little bit less. So, you can imagine how distraught I was to learn that corned beef has literally nothing to do with the yellow vegetable that grows on stalks. Well … almost nothing. 

“Corn” as we know it in Modern English has a rich etymology dating back to the Proto-Germanic kurnam, meaning “small seed.” This creates an obvious connection to the corn that we eat grilled with butter; what are kernels if not hundreds of small seeds lined up in a row? But Old English used the word corn much how we use “grain” today — that is to say, corn referred to the overarching category of small, granular cereals rather than to any specific plant.

Dining

Cultural Cuisine: A Slice of Home on Campus

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Cornell University is prized as being the most diverse institution in the Ivy League, with 46 percent of undergraduates identifying as minorities and 11 percent as international students. Students come from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds and often bring customs and traditions from home. The diversity of the student body brings with it a diverse palette. Cornell Dining, consistently ranked in the top ten dining programs in the country, prides itself on being able to meet the dietary needs of their students by serving diverse cuisine and accommodating various restrictions. The menus at dining halls frequently feature foods from a variety of cultures.