The impact of Russia’s war against Ukraine can be felt far outside the actual battlefield. Modern war disproportionately affects gender and sexual minorities, something we are seeing in Ukraine even as Putin's anti-LGBTQ+ agenda seeks to relentlessly drive support for the war at home. How can a queer-studies focus advance conversations about decolonization in East European and Eurasian Studies? To address this question, Queer Focus will have six virtual panels featuring speakers from various disciplines and institutions. Panelists and participants will explore how gendered regimes were constitutive of Russo-centric relationships of power, defining the region and how we study it, as we collectively grapple with what it means to re-examine our current research, teaching, and institutional practices.
Events in UCIS
Friday, January 19
During the past century, the world has experienced nearly incessant violence and persecution in which religion is a significant factor. Tens of millions of people have been forced to migrate because they are minority populations of states that define belonging by ancestry and faith. Today, hundreds of thousands of Muslim Rohingya refugees fleeing violence in Myanmar are living in Bangladeshi refugee camps. The partitions of Greece and Turkey, India and Pakistan, Israel and Palestine, and Protestant and Catholic Ireland still reverberate through collective memory and geopolitics.
Students may arrive in our classrooms with these events seared into their personal and collective memories. Intergenerational trauma and rage may make it challenging for them to question what they have learned about injury and responsibility. They may be asked to engage with classmates and teachers whom they identify with the perpetrators of unspeakable acts.
This interdisciplinary roundtable panel offers an opportunity for scholars whose teaching touches on these anguishing histories to share strategies for fostering generative and constructive classroom experiences. Panelists: Yasmine Flodin-Ali (Religious Studies), Calum Matheson (Communications), Tony Novosel (History), Mina Rajagopalan (History of Art & Architecture), Ana Sekulic (History), and Adam Shear (Religious Studies).
Join this Hybrid Panel Discussion Event to learn more about what U.S. Feminists can learn from LGBTQ+ Activists and their resistance in Eastern Europe.
Lunch will be provided for in-person attendees.
COUNTRY: Czech Republic
Director: Adam Rybanský
Director and Screenwriter Adam Rybanský’s debut film points to a fantastic career ahead. This humorous parody about misinformation, fear, and prejudices was screened in the Panorama section of the 72nd Berlin Film Festival. Rybanský says about his film, "This is a story about good people being victims of conspiracy theories and their own fears." Clumsy Standa and recently widowed Bronya are volunteer firefighters in a small village where they enjoy a quiet and peaceful life. Things begin to change when a van crashes into a crowd of people during the Easter Fair. Before anyone notices, the driver runs away from the car crash. People believe it is a terrorist attack, and the festive mood is replaced by an atmosphere of fear, hatred, and misinformation. Soon, the fire brigade becomes a militia.
HARRIS THEATER
809 Liberty Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15222
https://trustarts.org/pct_home/visit/facilities/harris-theater
Faculty, Staff, and students of the University of Pittsburgh may attend for free by showing a Pitt University ID at the door.
Attendance
Public: 5
University Affiliates: 8
Join Addverse Poesia, an international and multilingual poetry group that discusses, reads and translates poems in at least 4 languages, for their weekly meetings!
COUNTRY: France
DIRECTOR: Bruno Dumont
France de Meurs, played by the amazing Léa Seydoux, is a seemingly unflappable superstar TV journalist. She is a newscasting influencer loved by all but then her career, home life, and psychological stability are shaken after she carelessly drives into a young delivery man on a busy Paris Street. The film’s biting humor takes on the state of news and the state of the state right from her first over-the-top interaction with President Emanual Macron. Her name symbolizes it all; her first name, of course, stands in for France, the country, but in a play on words, her last name suggests both home and death. Is it reality TV, ego performance, or sincere reportage? What is the role of the established media in France? Dumont’s close-ups of beautiful France, the person, and the place invite us to do a long take.
HARRIS THEATER
809 Liberty Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15222
https://trustarts.org/pct_home/visit/facilities/harris-theater
Faculty, Staff, and students of the University of Pittsburgh may attend for free by showing a Pitt University ID at the door.
Attendance
Public: 12
University Affiliates: 8