Upcoming Events

- Zharia White
- 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm
- Global Hub
Are you an international student at Pitt looking to connect, or interested in connecting with international students? Stop by the Nook in the Global Hub on Tuesdays, between 2 and 4 pm during Spring semester, to chat with OIS Outreach Coordinator Zharia White from the Office of International Services!

- Molly McSweeney
- 2:30 pm to 3:30 pm
- Global Hub
Attention: Undergraduate students! 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!

- 4:00 pm to 5:30 pm
- 4130 Posvar Hall
Topics covered in this information session include how to creatively design and highlight curricular and co-curricular learning experiences in a professional manner. They will learn how to use Digication, how to add tabs, add photos, papers, research projects etc. and will consider what curricular and co-curricular experiences to include.

- Dr. Yi-Tze Lee
- 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm
- 4130 Posvar Hall
Dr. Yi-tze Lee will explore the cultural and environmental connections of the indigenous Amis people of Taiwan, focusing on their interactions with animal kin such as pigs, birds, and fish. Drawing from his research and recent publication
(Environmental Shift in the Entangled Anthropocene: Use of Birds in Amis Ritual Practices of Taiwan, UBC Press, 2024), this lecture delves into Amis rituals and ceremonies, their adaptation to modern environmental governance, and the broader implications for human-species relationships in an urbanized context.
The talk will feature three unique stories: The use of pigs in funerary rituals during COVID-19. The interplay of bird hunting for ceremonies and animal protection laws. Amis fishing strategies amidst changing river environments.
About the Speaker:
Dr. Yi-tze Lee earned his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Pittsburgh in 2012. He is currently an Associate Professor at National Dong Hwa University in Taiwan, where he served as department chair from 2021–2024. His research focuses on indigenous revitalization, food sovereignty, ritual performance, and multispecies networks.
Dr. Lee’s work has been widely published, including contributions to Feathered Entanglements (UBC Press, 2024) and Environmental Teachings for the Anthropocene (2020).

- 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm
- Baker Hall CMU Campus, A53
China's recent achievements in artificial intelligence, exemplified by DeepSeek's breakthrough LLM, represent more than just technological advancement - they signal a fundamental shift in global innovation dynamics. While Chinese companies have demonstrated remarkable capabilities in areas from EVs to social media to AI, U.S. responses continue to follow a predictable pattern: disbelief, anger, accusations of theft, and blame. This recurring cycle reveals both China's evolved capacity for coordinated technological development and deep-seated American anxieties about what this means for U.S. technological primacy. Drawing on his extensive experience analyzing both societies, Sinica Podcast host Kaiser Kuo explores how China's innovation ecosystem has matured, why its successes continue to surprise Western observers, and what this tells us about the structural, cultural, and epistemic barriers to understanding China's technological transformation. The talk examines how China's rise has challenged core assumptions about the relationship between political systems and innovation, market economies and state guidance, and ultimately, about American exceptionalism itself — and whether it can accommodate China's own brand of exceptionalism.
Benno Weiner is Associate Professor of History at Carnegie Mellon University where he specializes in the ethnopolitics of twentieth-century state and nation making along China’s ethnocultural borderlands. He is the author of The Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier and co-editor of Conflicting Memories: Tibetan History under Mao Retold.

- 12:00 pm to 2:00 pm
- 4130 Posvar Hall
A weekly podcast about current affairs in China, hosted by Kaiser Kuo and featuring in-depth conversations about books, ideas, new research, intellectual currents, and cultural trends that can help us better understand what’s happening in China. A conversation between Sinica Podcast host and co-founder Kaiser Kuo and Professor Benno Weiner.

- Zharia White
- 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm
- Global Hub
Are you an international student at Pitt looking to connect, or interested in connecting with international students? Stop by the Nook in the Global Hub on Tuesdays, between 2 and 4 pm during Spring semester, to chat with OIS Outreach Coordinator Zharia White from the Office of International Services!

- Molly McSweeney
- 2:30 pm to 3:30 pm
- Global Hub
Attention: Undergraduate students! 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!

- 6:00 pm to 7:15 pm
- 4130 Posvar Hall
Squid Game’s phenomenal success calls attention to the local specificity of Netflix’s global expansion as it commissions original K-dramas. This practice has rich implications, both positive and negative, for Netflix’s production and distribution of Korean content. K-dramas classified as Netflix Originals have been riding its international market power to a wide range of transnational audiences, enabling national television creators to reimagine cultural spheres for both production and distribution that transgress the uneven circuit of transnational media. At the same time, the deterritorialisation of Netflix’s K-dramas raises concerns about its deep interpenetration of the Korean TV industry.
As a teacher-scholar, Dr. Ju believes that mass media lies in the multifaceted cutting-edge research field with inherent dimensional complexity as functioning as a social, economical, and cultural institution. Through teaching and mentoring students in mass communication, Dr. Ju strives to convey the body of knowledge about media and culture for individuals, society, communities, and the global society. Therefore she hopes that students can engage better in dynamic forms of media and communication practices to their day-to-day life.

- Gina Kim
- 3:00 pm
- 4130 Posvar Hall
Gina Kim is a Postdoctoral Associate in Japanese Studies, specializing in Trans-Asian art history and visual culture, with a primary research focus on Manchukuo.
Manchukuo (1932–1945), despite its short existence in northeast China during Japan’s imperial expansion, serves as a pivotal historical space for understanding trans-Asian experiences and discourses. This talk explores the art and cultural networks of Japanese settlers in Dalian, highlighting how they negotiated and redefined settler identities while cultivating a distinctive modernity. Through observing, producing, and collecting the cultural expressions of ethnic others—ranging from coolies to folk objects and toys—these settlers crafted unique narratives of identity and belonging.

- Molly McSweeney
- 2:30 pm to 3:30 pm
- Global Hub
Attention: Undergraduate students! 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!

- 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm
- 4130 Posvar Hall

- Molly McSweeney
- 2:30 pm to 3:30 pm
- Global HubAttention: Undergraduate students! 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, rec
Attention: Undergraduate students! 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!

- 6:00 pm to 7:15 pm
- 4130 Posvar Hall
This article is part of an ongoing ethnography of the Japanese television industry focusing on its attempts to experiment with live, interactive content that was manipulable via smart devices, laptops, and remote controls. Based on 18 months of fieldwork in the Japanese television industry in four major TV network offices and two production companies, it also incorporates interviews with more than 30 broadcast company employees. Using two case studies of early interactive television programming to discuss the strategies producers have used to create community and promote identification among audiences of these shows: ‘Arashi Feat. You’ was a live music event that courted a large audience through the involvement of a massively popular boy band and promoted the idea of ‘turning viewers into users’ by allowing them to play musical instruments along with the band. ‘The Last Award’ allowed participants to submit and evaluate each other’s videos live through a dedicated user interface. Through these examples, Rodwell argues that participation alters the nature of television spectacle and results in changes to the way producers address and inscribe audiences as cocreators of content. The rhetoric used by interactive television accordingly defaults to ‘we’ and ‘us’ and features accessible and relatable celebrities as surrogates for the audience.
Elizabeth Rodwell is a media anthropologist who is interested in interactivity, television, emergent technology (in general), and artificial intelligence (specifically). She is also a usability researcher (UX). My first book Push the Button: Interactive Television and Collaborative Journalism in Japan (forthcoming) examines the post-Fukushima tensions in the Japanese journalism and television industries, and seeks to account for the ways that media professionals are responding to increasingly skeptical and distracted audiences. She tracks the global debut of interactive television in Japan– a cutting-edge fusion of mediums that represented the most dramatic departure from existing television technology in several decades.

- Molly McSweeney
- 2:30 pm to 3:30 pm
- Global Hub
Attention: Undergraduate students! 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!
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