Events

“Lee” Lenora Dingus, employed at Pearson Education, an international education conglomerate, shares her thoughts on inclusivity, diversity, and being Haudenosaunee in Pittsburgh. She has served in federal positions within Veteran’s Affairs, the IRS, and the Social Security Administration. Her people, who have always been located around the greater Tri-State area, believe that culture stems from women, and have had many women leaders, as Clan Mothers, Faith Keepers, Medicine Women, and politicians. Lee shares with us her work as a Diversity and Inclusion Advocate and employee in international education. To Register:
https://pitt.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIoce6hqzkjHd1I2T3el8PlmtObSSJSKAV_

Brazil, 2021 | Fiction In powerful images, alternating between documentary observation and staged sequences, and dense soundscapes, Luiz Bolognesi documents the indigenous community of the Yanomami and depicts their threatened natural environment in the Amazon rain forest.

Dr. Abdesalam Soudi serves as Professor, Cultural Competence Consultant, and Cultural and Linguistic Competence Master’s Course Co-Director, Family Medicine Department at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and University of Pittsburgh. He is a Sociolinguist recognized for several scholarly accomplishments in Conversation Analysis, Cultural and Linguistic Diversity, Arabic Linguistics, Electronic Health Records, Cultural Competency in medical practice. He leads a cross-disciplinary Humanities in Health initiative (HinH). With a passion for discovering new findings and sharing knowledge, he will discuss the importance of cultural competency across all disciplines, from humanities to healthcare, in global initiatives around the world. To Register:
https://pitt.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYqdeyqqDsrEtcNibkJ0YKhLHsIRTmTpFoG

Paraguay, 2020 | Documentary Mateo Sobode Chiqueno's Ayoreo ancestors worshipped the sun, which they saw as a superior and generous being. But for him and his generation, the sun has primarily become a threat, turning deforested areas into dry, dusty plains—filmed here beautifully but ominously. Some Ayoreo still live in seclusion in the forests of the Chaco in Paraguay. But many more, among them Sobode Chiqueno, were herded into isolated settlements by missionaries, who took their land and forcibly converted them to Christianity. He started recording Ayoreo conversations, stories, and songs in the 1970s, and is still traveling to Ayoreo communities with his now-antique cassette recorder to interview them and collect their voices for his audio archive. Occasionally the device eats a tape, which he fixes with patient fiddling. The conversations express uncertainty about the loss of identity. Is it a problem that a culture disappears in order to adapt to another?

Barbara Weinstein is the Silver Professor of History at New York University and Past President of the American Historical Association. Her publications include The Amazon Rubber Boom, 1850-1920 (1983), For Social Peace in Brazil: Industrialists and the Remaking of the Working Class in São Paulo (1996), and The Color of Modernity: São Paulo and the Making of Race and Nation in Brazil (2015). Her research has received support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.