Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Feb. 12

MOUNT VERNON – Anna Tsing, professor of anthropology at the University of California-Santa Cruz, will speak at Cornell College as the Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar on Thursday, Feb. 12, at 3:10 p.m. in Hedges Conference Room.

The lecture, “Fugues for Multi-Species Living,” is a tour through a Japanese forest examining the history of co-existing species and a future in which multiple species can thrive. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Tsing researches scientific and commercial connections involving matsutake mushrooms, an aromatic wild mushroom appreciated in Japan and picked in forests across the Northern Hemisphere. The research, which opens questions about cosmopolitan science and global capitalism, builds on her earlier work in Southeast Asia on the environment, cultural diversity, and global connections.

During her two-day visit to Cornell, Tsing will speak to an environmental studies class, attend a student symposium on energy, and dine with students and faculty.

Tsing has been a visiting professor at Harvard and the University of Chicago, a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. She is the author of Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection (Senior Book Prize, American Ethnological Association) and In the Realm of the Diamond Queen: Marginality in an Out-of-the-Way Place (Benda Prize, Association for Asian Studies).

The Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Program makes available each year 12 or more distinguished scholars who visit 100 colleges and universities with chapters of Phi Beta Kappa. Founded in 1776, Phi Beta Kappa is the nation’s oldest and most respected academic honor society, with chapters at 276 colleges and universities.