Message from the Director
Two incompatible assertions are both true. The first contends that all centuries are global centuries: their resource flows; their patterns of sustainability and access; their ecologies; systems of exchange and conflict have always been globally interdependent in ways that we have only begun to map. In this respect, the domain of global studies is nothing new.
A second assertion, in contrast, holds that the 21st century is the Global Century, an era in which an ever increasing number of the world’s inhabitants are becoming newly aware of their status as global citizens, whether that status is conceived as relating to their health, security, economy, or the conditions of their society.
These four concerns—Global Health, Global Security, Global Economy, and Global Society—form the four pillars of the University of Pittsburgh’s Global Studies Center (GSC), where they sustain our investigations in both contemporary and historical perspectives. They are reflected in the Center’s research support, its course offerings, library acquisitions, conferences and workshops, as well as its strategic partnerships and endowments.
Housed in Pitt’s University Center for International Studies (UCIS), the Center is committed to fostering the global research, learning, and competence of scholars, researchers, students, and teachers, as well as members of the community at-large. The Center’s commitment is two-fold: on the one hand, GSC is a source for innovation; on the other hand, it is a crossroads for existing strengths. In the first instance, as a source for innovation, the Center seeks to initiate research, advance curricular projects, and offer new professional-development opportunities to the Pitt community and external audiences beyond the limits of existing activities. In the second instance, the Center seeks to provide resources supportive of the university’s traditional strengths and emergent priorities. Here the Center’s goal is not only to serve as an information matrix, but also to render more visible Pitt’s contributions in the global arena. In collaboration with the professional schools and their individual global/international units (e.g., Center for Global Health, the Center for International Legal Education), the GSC seeks to serve as a strategic crossroads for projects housed in otherwise distant parts of the University.
DISTINCTIVE FEATURES
Among the Center’s unique initiatives is PittMAP, a global study-abroad program offering undergraduates a four-month “world semester” with five-week stays at three major research universities across the globe. In keeping with the Center’s research foci, recent trips have been devoted to Development Policy (Spring 2012), Global Political Economy (2013), and Global Health/Human Rights (2014).
A second distinctive feature of our Center is its close partnership with Pitt’s World History Center (WHC), a unit committed to building global and interdisciplinary studies that encourage worldwide collaboration in the analysis of the global past. The research agenda of the WHC, which strives to expand the horizons of large-scale historical study, is of vital importance to the Center. While the latest trends and critical issues of global studies are often conceived (at other centers) as symptoms of contemporaneity, the WHC affords GSC invaluable collaborative opportunities through its World-Historical Dataverse, its cooperation in the Global Studies Consortium, and other projects that provide a historically informed examination of global transaction beyond the contemporary moment.
GOVERNANCE
The Center is proud to have as its Board of Advisors five members who are among the most prominent figures in regional and national issues pertaining to the Center. They include Board of Advisors Chair Dr. Karen Feinstein (founding and current CEO, Jewish Healthcare Foundation); Sue Ellen Ganz (Vice Chair, Advisory Board of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust); Annie Prucey (Vice President, World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh); Anahita Firouz Radjy (lecturer, business advisor, and author); and Ambassador Daniel Simpson (Associate and Foreign Editor, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; former Ambassador at the US Embassies in the Central African Republic, Somalia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo). Internal to the University, a GSC seeks guidance from its Faculty Advisory Board, comprised of colleagues from Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, Katz Graduate School of Business, School of Education, School of Law, School of Public Health, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, and the WHC.
SUPPORT FOR THE CENTER
Key to our development has been the support of named endowments that provide an invaluable research, conference, and training focus to the Center’s activities. These currently include the Benter Foundation’s UCIS Visiting Professor in Contemporary International Issues, the Carl Malmberg Memorial Scholarship in African Studies, the H.J. Heinz Company Foundation Fellowship, the Kabak Endowment Fund, and the Newman Award for International Intergenerational Project Initiatives.
We welcome the opportunity to explore further ways of developing the Center’s mission and enhancing the intellectual debates on key issues of global impact both within the university community and across the region. We are proud to serve as a catalyst for innovative research and curricular initiatives. We invite your engagement with us in entrepreneurial and collaborative projects that will contribute to our emergent understanding of the 21st century as simultaneously the Global Century and one of many global centuries increasingly available for our curiosity and analysis.