Events

Informal question and answer with our 2017 scholarship winners!

Reception will follow.

This event is free.

We live in an information economy, and the future of democracy and equity depend on everyone’s ability to access information. Yet, even as scholars and organizations work to make scholarly work openly available, the increased commercialization of information and technology, along with the enhanced capabilities for data collection and surveillance, threaten the ability for users to access that scholarly work. In addition, persistent racial, class, and gender divides exclude growing numbers of people from the internet and knowledge commons. Panelists will examine how the growing concentration of corporate control of internet service provision and content, including policies related to net neutrality, affect the ability of all people to have access to information. The broader implications of these developments for both democracy and inclusion and for the future of scientific inquiry will be discussed, and the panel will offer steps users can take to help protect internet freedom and the knowledge commons for all.

Part of a series of events for Open Access Week 2017 (Oct. 23-29)
Available online via webstream (http://www.ucis.pitt.edu/global/)

Khet Mar is a Burmese writer and political activist who was persecuted, tortured, and imprisoned in her home country. She is currently living at City of Asylum in Ithaca, NY as an exiled writer-in-residence. Her short novel about two oppressed teenagers speaking to each other through their apartment windows was, in her words, “a fictional way to express what happened to me in jail.” Yet, the Burmese censors read the plot as metaphor and banned the novel. Khet Mar will lead the discussion herself, in person. We will conclude with ideas for using the texts in the classroom. Books, dinner, parking and Act 48 hours provided.

Annual dinner held to raise funds for the Chinese Room Committee Scholarship.

Thomas W. Walker
One Scholar’s Half Century Affair with Nicaragua

Amy Knapp Room - Hillman Library G74
Monday, October 30, 2017 4:00pm – 5:15pm
Reception to follow

Thomas W. Walker is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Director Emeritus of Latin American Studies at Ohio University, Athens, Ohio. Before retiring, he taught courses on “The Government and Politics of Latin American,” “Revolution in Latin America,” and “Latin American Political Thought.”

Dr. Walker is both a Brazilianist and a Central Americanist. He did his dissertation research in Brazil and has published a couple of articles and one book about the politics in that country: (with Agnaldo Sousa Barbosa) Dos Coroneis a Metropole: Fios e Tramas da Sociedade e da Politica em Ribeirao Preto no Seculo 20(Palavra Magica, 2000)

Regarding Central America, he is the author, co-author or editor of ten books, two of which are now in their sixth editions: Nicaragua: Emerging the Shadow of the Eagle, co-authored with Christine Wade and Understanding Central America: Global Forces, Rebellion and Change, co-authored with John Booth and Christine Wade. In 1984, 1989/90, and 1996, Walker served on international delegations that observed Nicaragua’s national elections. With those experiences, he was later invited to be part of the Carter Center’s teams, which observed the 2004 presidential recall referendum in Venezuela and the 2006 National elections in Nicaragua. Walker has delivered over 185 guest lectures at
institutions of higher education around the United States, Latin America, and Europe.

Special Thanks to Dr. Ariel Armony, Vice Provost for Globa Affairs

Osama Alomar is a prominent Syrian writer of al-quisa al-quasira jiddan, or what has been called “flash fiction.” These extremely short stories (sometimes only one or two sentences) have the appeal of a fable. Currently an exiled writer-in-residence at City of Asylum in Pittsburgh, Alomar will be conducting this session himself at City of Asylum (40 W. North Ave). Participants are asked to watch a 45-minute long dialogue between Prof. Uma Satyavolu (English) and Lisa Bromberg (Global Studies Center) prior to attending, to glean interesting background information on Alomar's innovative form and ideas for classroom use. Books and Act 48 credit hours provided. Dinner TBA.

The longtime home of the Soviet nuclear program, the Chelyabinsk region contains beautiful lakes, shuttered factories, mysterious closed cities, and some of the most polluted places on earth. Based on her recent book Putin Country (Farrar, Straus&Giroux, 2016), Garrels charts the aftershocks of the U.S.S.R.’s collapse. Having returned again and again to Chelyabinsk, Garrels argues that the area’s new freedoms and opportunities were exciting but also traumatic. As the economic collapse of the early 1990s abated, the city of Chelyabinsk became richer and more cosmopolitan, even as official corruption and intolerance for minorities grew more entrenched. Today, as Vladimir Putin tightens his grip on power and Western sanctions continue to lower the standard of living, the local population mingles belligerent nationalism with a deep ambivalence about their country’s direction. Through it all, Garrels sympathetically charts an ongoing identity crisis. In the aftermath of the Soviet Union, what is Russia? What kind of pride and cohesion can it offer? And why does Putin command the loyalty of so many Russians, even those who decry the abuses of power they regularly encounter?

Anne Garrels has been honored with numerous journalism awards, including the Peabody and the Polk. Garrels is on the board of Oxfam America and the Committee to Protect Journalists. For almost 25 years Anne Garrels was the senior foreign correspondent for NPR, reporting from Russia and the other former Soviet republics, the former Yugoslavia, the Middle East, China, Mongolia, and Iraq. She arrived in Baghdad six months before the 2003 U.S. invasion, stayed during the U.S. bombing campaign and continued to cover Iraq for the next six years. Before joining NPR in 1986 she was chief correspondent in Moscow and Central America for ABC, and the State Department correspondent for NBC.

Putin Country (Farrar, Straus&Giroux, 2016) will be available for purchase and signing.

With the Russian conquest of Central Asia, new techniques were introduced in the region- one of them was photography. Being a medium of modernity it was responsible for the establishment of a new visual culture, the overcoming of space and new feeling of time. Especially in an imperial context photography became important to connect the Asian periphery with the Moscow center. With an iconographic/iconological approach it is possible to analyze the genesis of the motifs that produced the knowledge of Central Asia since the first published travel logs, and their shift after the 1917 Revolution.

Sergio Delgado, Harvard University, Romance Language & Literature