Past Events

Join us on Tuesday June 20, 2023, 4pm-8pm in Schenley Plaza in Oakland for the return of Pittsburgh’s World Refugee Day and Immigrant Heritage Month Celebration! The event will feature performances, speakers, music and dancing. Support local refugee and immigrant owned restaurants and craft vendors. Engage with a variety of community organizations to learn about services in our city. We’re excited to celebrate together!

Soviet ideology treated religion as an enemy, a tool of oppression and an expression of backwardness. Militant atheism, the prohibition of religious rituals, and the repression of religious communities aimed to create a secular, rational, and scientific society. Yet, religion mattered in Soviet people’s lives. And with institutional religion restricted, many people expressed their spirituality through “lived religion” - the practice of religion and spirituality in everyday lives. What were the practices of lived religion in the context of state socialism? And how did it converge and diverge with the return of institutionalised religion and spiritual lift after the collapse of communism? REEES Spring 2023 Series, Religion in (Post-Socialism) Societies, will explore the role of religion in socialist and post-socialist societies in eight online discussions on religion and its relations to repression, nation-building, indigenous cultures, and memory. This is a part of REEES’s Spring 2023 lecture series.

Tonia Lechtman was a Jew, a loving mother and wife, a Polish patriot, a committed communist, and a Holocaust survivor. Throughout her life, these identities brought her to multiple countries – Poland, Palestine, Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Israel – where she lived on the margins of society during some of the most pivotal and cataclysmic decades of the twentieth century.
This roundtable will discuss Anna Müller’s book, which is not a mere biography of a remarkable woman, but also offers a view of the troubled history of twentieth-century Europe. The roundtable features Karolina May Chu, moderator (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), Marci Shore (Yale University), Joanna Sliwa (Jewish Claims Conference), Anna Hájková (University of Warwick), Jadwiga Biskupska (Sam Houston State University), Małgorzata Fidelis (University of Illinois Chicago), John Bukowczyk (Wayne State University, editor of the Polish and Polish-American Studies Series from Ohio University Press), and Anna Müller. Anna Müller holds an MA from the University of Gdańsk, Poland, and a Ph.D. from Indiana University. She is an Associate Professor and the Frank and Mary Padzieski Endowed Professor in Polish, Polish American, and Eastern European Studies at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. Previously, she was a curator for the Museum of the Second War in Gdańsk, preparing exhibitions on the Holocaust, the concentration camps, forced labor, and eugenics. She is the author of If the Walls Could Speak. Inside a Women’s Prison in Communist Poland (Oxford University Press, 2018) and An Ordinary Life? The Journeys of Tonia Lechtman, 1918-1996 (Ohio University Press, 2022). The talk is co-sponsored by the Polish Studies Association, the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, and the University of Pittsburgh’s History Department. Through May 23, 2023, discounted books are available at www.ohioswallow.com, using the promo code TONIA.

Soviet ideology treated religion as an enemy, a tool of oppression and an expression of backwardness. Militant atheism, the prohibition of religious rituals, and the repression of religious communities aimed to create a secular, rational, and scientific society. Yet, religion mattered in Soviet people’s lives. And with institutional religion restricted, many people expressed their spirituality through “lived religion” - the practice of religion and spirituality in everyday lives. What were the practices of lived religion in the context of state socialism? And how did it converge and diverge with the return of institutionalised religion and spiritual lift after the collapse of communism? REEES Spring 2023 Series, Religion in (Post-Socialism) Societies, will explore the role of religion in socialist and post-socialist societies in eight online discussions on religion and its relations to repression, nation-building, indigenous cultures, and memory. This is a part of REEES’s Spring 2023 lecture series.

This two-part masterclass offers an introduction to researching East and Southeast European history using arrival material German. Led by Dr. Tamara Scheer (University of Vienna), the meetings will include an introduction to German Kurrentschrift with practical exercises as well as resources and strategies as to how to approach different institutions and archival collections. The workshop is open to everyone interested in historical research in the region, including early-career scholars planning their research trips and those who wish to brush up on their archival skills.

Come and practice your Hungarian and meet others interested in the language! All levels welcome.