Come meet international students, make friends, practice conversational English, and have fun together, during these weekly discussion groups coordinated by the English Language Institute. Feel free to bring your lunch :)

Join the French Club for conversation hours, on Mondays & Thursday at 5-6 pm during Spring 2024, for French speaking individuals of varying levels to practice the French language.

The aim of this panel is to bring together academic and non-academic perspectives to reflect on two issues:

1) The challenges Europe/the EU faces in terms of programs that target Roma inclusion, equality, and community development.
2) Roma-driven social justice initiatives at the local, national, or transnational level that seek to address the gap between policy and community needs.

Moderated by:
Angéla Kóczé, Director of the Romani Studies Program (Central European University)
Zsuzsánna Magdó, Associate Director of the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (University of Pittsburgh)

Panelists:
Adriana Helbig, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies (DSAS) and Associate Professor of Music
László Fosztó, Senior Researcher (Romanian Institute for Research on National Minorities)
Silas Kropf, Independent Consultant and former Member of the Independent Commission on Anti-gypsyism in Germany

Natural disasters, civil unrest, open conflict, and other unstable situations create challenges for healthcare providers. Clinicians and support personnel face potentially dangerous conditions as they provide physical and mental health care services to communities where authority and infrastructure have broken down. A diverse panel of speakers will describe their experiences addressing healthcare provision during complex humanitarian emergencies in Ukraine, Haiti, and Gaza.

Guest speakers include: Dr. Thaer Ahmad who just returned from volunteering in Khan Younis Gaza, Dr. Yvetot Joseph calling in from Haiti, and Dr. Sahloul, executive director Medglobal and Dr. Andreescu , Human Rights in Mental Health-FGIP

Are you looking to gain experience that will help prepare you for a
globally-connected job market? Stop by Drop-In Hours to learn more
about getting the Global Distinction added to your academic transcript,
receiving special recognition at graduation, and standing out to
prospective employers!

Join Global Experiences Office Peer Advisors for this weekly roundtable in the Global Hub! Bring your questions about study abroad programs!

Join German Club at Pitt’s weekly meetings, on Tuesdays at 6-7 pm during Spring 2024, to converse in German and learn German culture!

Join weekly Tavolina (a separate gathering from Tavola Italiana) to
practice Italian. This is an Italian conversation table aimed for beginner
and intermediate speakers.

Join weekly Swahili Class 2 students for weekly conversation hours this
Spring semester, to practice Swahili outside of the classroom.

Come practice your conversational Hungarian with students of all levels!

Join weekly Bate-Papo Portuguese conversation practice for all levels,
from brand-new beginners to advanced or heritage speakers!

A Guggenheim Fellow, Yunte Huang has taught at Harvard and the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he is a professor of English. The author of “Inseparable” and the Edgar Award-winning biography “Charlie Chan”-both National Book Critics Circle Award finalists-Huang speaks frequently about American popular culture.

At once a reclamation of Wong’s life and a trenchant social commentary, “Daughter of the Dragon”, with its lyrical writing and period illustrations, becomes a truly resonant work of history that reflects the raging anti-Chinese xenophobia, unabashed sexism, and ageism toward women that defined both Hollywood and America in Wong’s too-brief time on earth.

Join a panel of Pitt Study Abroad Young Alumni Council members for a virtual Ask Me Anything event on April 3, 2024, at 6:30 PM ET. Our panel will be available to answer questions to help you feel more prepared for your study abroad experience. We look forward to seeing you there! Learn more and sign up here: https://forms.gle/zmLyCGSoKxbUYBHf8

Join Spring 2024 Kya Baat Hai weekly conversation hours, on
Wednesdays from 7-8 pm, for students to practice speaking in Hindi and Urdu and connect over shared cultural experiences!

Mangia con noi! Bring your lunch and chat with us! Pitt students only,
all levels welcome!

Join GSPIA Dean Carissa Slotterback and Carl Ware (GSPIA '77) as they explore how Ware's Pitt education powered his career and pivotal role in helping to end apartheid.

You've probably heard about ethnic studies, but what impact does it really have on our understanding of the world and each other? Dive into this vital discussion with students, faculty, and staff as we talk about what is Ethnic Studies.

Join the French Club for conversation hours, on Mondays & Thursday at 5-6 pm during Spring 2024, for French speaking individuals of varying levels to practice the French language.

Global Literary Encounters book discussions are pre-lecture discussions that align with the Pittsburgh Arts & Lecture's Ten Evenings series. Global Literary Encounters put prominent world authors and their work in a global perspective in order to provide additional insight on writers and engaging issues.

These pre-lecture discussions, hosted by the Global Studies Center at the University of Pittsburgh, will take place via Zoom at 6pm EST. Please note that the "Global Literary Encounters" pre-lecture discussions are held on the Thursday before the Author Lectures, which are held on the following Monday and hosted by Pittsburgh Arts and Lectures.

Join the Persian Language Table every other Thursday during Spring 2024 to practice language, celebrate culture, and meet new people!

Karibuni! Are you interested in learning some conversational Swahili? Join us for a three part mini-series taught by our advanced Swahili students! Topics include introductions, bargaining, food, and more. We hope to see you there!

Register via Handshake to learn more about the Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Award, which allows English speakers to help teach the English language abroad! Hear from a current winner of the Fulbright ETA.

Want to study abroad for graduate school?

Register via Handshake for this info session, which will discuss scholarship opportunities for graduate students wanting to study abroad in the UK or Ireland!

In Useful Bullshit Neil J. Diamant pulls back the curtain on early constitutional conversations between citizens and officials in the PRC. Scholars have argued that China, like the former USSR, promulgated constitutions to enhance its domestic and international legitimacy by opening up the constitution-making process to ordinary people, and by granting its citizens political and socioeconomic rights. But what did ordinary officials and people say about their constitutions and rights? Did constitutions contribute to state legitimacy?
Over the course of four decades, the PRC government encouraged millions of citizens to pose questions about, and suggest revisions to, the draft of a new constitution.

Since 2015, Jain communities have defended the practice of santhārā, a voluntary ritual fast until death practiced mostly by elderly laywomen, against claims formalized in Public Interest Litigation that the fast amounts to illegal suicide and its abetment through communal and familial coercion. Laywomen's santhārās employ a religious idiom to shift the strain of aging and death within the household, where norms of elderly, ascetic, and maternal self-effacement run together. This talk traces the stories of two women, Jethiben and Manishaben, to ethnographically explore the entanglements of these norms in household relations and configurations of kinship in which families--especially elder sons--allow or encourage their mothers to undertake the fast until death. Jethiben’s accrual of agency over years in small acts oriented toward santhārā culminated in her decision to renounce household life and depart from her son’s home despite her family’s reluctance, whereas the decline of Manishaben’s physical health and cognitive capacities resulted in her children deciding in desperation to “give” her the vow of santhārā, acting as proxies on her behalf. In these contrasting situations, I reconsider the possibilities for what kind of ethical act santhārā can be, recognizing how the fast until death may exceed its religious implication to become a gesture of ethical repair concerned with the archetype, role, and relation of and to the mother. Santhārā in this mode endures and reconciles rifts within the intersubjective vulnerability of the family. The talk reflects on how the abandonment of self, filial care that assures a mother’s death, and the renunciation of relatedness may be recognized as carrying reparative potential in the face of death, despite the state’s corrosive suspicion of compulsion and family neglect.

Dr. Miki Chase is Assistant Professor and Śrī Anantnāth Chair in Jain Studies in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She was previously the inaugural Bhagwan Munisuvrata Swami Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Religion at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign after receiving her PhD in Anthropology from the Johns Hopkins University in 2022. Her research explores the intersections of anthropology of law and religion with the ethics of death and dying. Dr. Chase’s book project in progress is an ethnographic examination of social negotiations of the ascetic ethical disposition in the Jain voluntary fast unto death. Based on fieldwork in Delhi, Jaipur, and Mumbai, her work traces the gendered norms through which Jain laywomen reshape ideals and concepts of death outlined in scripture, attending to the complexities of urban domestic life, the medicalization of death, and the shifting political and legal terrain following public interest litigation contesting the legality of the fast. Her research has been funded by the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) (2019-20) and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (2018-19).

Join Addverse Poesia, an international and multilingual poetry group
that discusses, reads and translates poems in at least 4 languages, for
their weekly meetings!

This annual national competition provides US school and college students the opportunity to demonstrate their Russian language knowledge while meeting with other students of Russian and conversing with native Russian speakers. Students will receive recognition for their demonstrated language proficiency, improve their chances of getting international and study abroad scholarships, and enhance their professional resume.
For more information and to register: https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/creees/events/olympiada

Register by March 1, 2024

Competition (in-person and online): Saturday, April 6, 2024.

This annual national competition provides US school and college students the opportunity to demonstrate their Russian language knowledge while meeting with other students of Russian and conversing with native Russian speakers. Students will receive recognition for their demonstrated language proficiency, improve their chances of getting international and study abroad scholarships, and enhance their professional resume.
For more information and to register: https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/creees/events/olympiada

Registration deadline: March 1, 2024.

Competition (in-person and online): Saturday, March 2, 2024.