Past Events

The Pittsburgh Chapter of the Kosciuszko Foundation will host a public piano performance of Chopin, Mendelssohn, and Mussorgsky at PNC Recital Hall at Duquesne University on Sunday, October 22, 2023, at 3 p.m. to benefit the foundation’s youth programs in Poland and Ukraine. Pianists David Allen Wehr and Dr. Robert Armstrong look forward to delighting music enthusiasts with several selections highlighting the expressiveness of the Romantic period and, particularly, Frédéric Chopin’s genius contribution to Polish and musical history. A brief overview of Chopin’s life and work will also be included in the program. Ticket price: $25 / $10 for students
Available for purchase here: bit.ly/ChopinRecital or contacting the Kosciuszko Foundation at mlellena@zoominterest.net. All proceeds benefit the foundation’s ongoing Teaching English in Poland (TEIP) program for Ukrainian Children and disadvantaged Polish youth.

Come meet international students, make friends, practice conversational English, and have fun together, during these weekly discussion groups coordinated by the English Language Institute. Feel free to bring your lunch :)

Come practice your Hungarian speaking skills and meet other individuals who are interested in the language. All levels are welcome!

Dr. Kseniia Minakova is an Associate Professor of Physics, Leader Researcher in Optics & Photonics Laboratory and Deputy Chair of the Admissions Committee at the National Technical University “Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute”. In 2023 she was named Optica Ambassador. Dr. Minakova received her Ph.D in Solid State Physics from the Institute of Electrophysics & Radiation Technologies National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, and the Master’s degree in Theoretical Physics from the V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University. Now Kseniia's research is focused on theoretical calculations and modeling of thermal physical processes to find modern solutions and technical improvements to solar collectors for photovoltaic systems, taking into account the most important parameters of heat transfer processes, to optimize and increase the amount of heat removed from the surface of the solar collector. She also explored best practices in the effective recruitment, training, and development of women and other underrepresented groups in STEAM and learned how she can institutionalize opportunities for women in Ukraine using US experience. She has great experience in STEM that is being implemented in University-wide, as well as in all-Ukrainian and international STEM projects. In this lecture she will discuss how the war in Ukraine has impacted researchers and rebuilding efforts.

This lecture considers the problem of the cultural value of political mystifications, forgeries, and appropriations. In doing so, I will focus on the historical and ideological contexts (in particular, the role of the Communist International in Moscow) of one of the most popular “songs of protest,” which was published by the American folklorist and pro-Communist activist from a Jewish-Hungarian family Lawrence Gellert’s (1898-1979) in his influential collection of African-American political songs (1936). In the 1930s, the song was translated into several languages and published in various left-wing periodicals, set to music, illustrated, performed in various countries, choreographed, interrogated by the American government as a part of “the propagandistic play,” and, all in all, embodied the anti-religious nature of a revolutionary new genre of song created by Black Americans. It eventually became an integral part of many communist singers’ repertoire (from Paul Robeson, William Bowers, and Pete Seeger to Ernst Busch). In this lecture, I show that the poem itself was both an ideological construct and a significant cultural fact which helped to introduce a new musical genre and secretly promoted the Soviet political agenda of the mid-1930s.

The undergraduate REEES Think Tank, housed at Howard University, is hosting a panel of speakers from The Brookings Institution. The speakers will address the need for diversity in the field and what they wish they had known when they were undergrads, setting out on their careers. Q&A will focus on providing opportunities for Think Tank Student Fellows, Howard University Russian Area Studies students. and Russian Area Studies students from other schools to be able to ask questions.