Upcoming Events
COVID-19 Response
COVID-19 Response: Learn how the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies is working under the current operational posture at ucis.pitt.edu/creees/covid.

- Molly McSweeney
- 5:00 pm to 6:00 pm
- Global Hub
Join two Pitt alumnae for a student-moderated discussion about their journeys from undergraduates to their work in Pittsburgh and Kenya. During this gathering in the Global Hub, you will hear from Founder and CEO of Kakenya's Dream, and 2023 Exemplary Leader award recipient Kakenya Ntaiya, and from Pitt alumna and Executive Director of Alliance for Refugee Youth Support and Education (ARYSE) Jenna Baron, about how these women's time at Pitt shaped their professional journeys. As we share a lite bite together, you will learn more about important skills for inspiring the next generation of changemakers and how Pitt can help you get there. Register here: https://pitt.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_71FZ2nySjZoVzVk

- Anca Sincan, Tatiana Vagramenko, Sean Guillory
- 12:00 pm to 1:30 pm
- Zoom
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.

- (All day)
The Undergraduate Research Symposium is an annual event since 2002 designed to provide undergraduate students, from the University of Pittsburgh and other colleges and universities, with advanced research experiences and opportunities to develop presentation skills. The event is open to undergraduates from all majors and institutions who have written a research paper from a social science, humanities, or business perspective focusing on the study of Eastern, Western, or Central Europe, the European Union, Russia, or Central Eurasia.
After the initial submission of papers, selected participants are grouped into panels according to their research topics. The participants then give 10- to 15-minute presentations based on their research to a panel of faculty and graduate students. The presentations are open to the public.
For more information and to apply, please visit: https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/creees/urs.
APPLICATION DEADLINE: January 8, 2023
Limited travel grants are available to help defray travel expenses for accepted participants located outside of the Pittsburgh region.
SYMPOSIUM: March 31, 2023

- Serhy Yekelchyk, Ararat L. Osipian, Ilya Gerasimov, Juliet Johnson
- 12:00 pm to 1:30 pm
- Zoom
The Future of SEEES Expertise: How Can We Anticipate Tomorrow’s Differences? is the sixth and the last panel of the Decolonization in Focus Series. The Russian war in Ukraine has had innumerable impacts, from personal to political, local, national, and global. One of the many sea changes wrought by the war has been the reckoning within Slavic/Russian & Eurasian Studies over the outsized role Russia has played and continues to play in the field and what could and should be done about it. The invited panelists in this series will consider the relationships of power that have long dominated the region, how they have impacted the field of study, and what, if anything, could and should be done about it. The series has six wide-ranging panels featuring speakers from various disciplines and institutions. Panelists and participants will be encouraged to consider why decolonizing Russian & Eurasian studies matters, how to implement concrete change in their classrooms, and how to conceive of the future of expertise within the field. All sessions will be convened using Zoom, live-streamed via YouTube, and recorded to be made available for later viewing.

- 12:00 pm to 9:00 pm
- Brightspace Room, Energy Innovation Center 1435 Bedford Avenue
This exhibit will take place from 12-3pm and 5-9pm on Sunday, April 1st. Opening remarks will begin at 7:30pm. Marc Fogel-- a 61-year-old history teacher from Pennsylvania who taught in Moscow at the Anglo-American School-- was taken into custody by Russian authorities in August 2021 and sentenced to 14 years in prison for the possession of medical marijuana. 80 Pittsburgh creatives and counting have committed to "Making a Marc" to shed light on Fogel and other detainees. As hostage negotiations are ongoing amidst Russia's war against Ukraine, the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies invites the Pitt community to support this initiative by Pittsburgh's community of creatives. Artist Tom Mosser has been collaborating with Sasha Phillips, one of the Fogel family attorneys to make this day happen with the support of Marc's family.

- Katja Wezel
- 4:00 pm to 5:00 pm
- 3703 Posvar Hall
With the recent developments in Ukraine and Putin's talk on restoring the Soviet aor the Russian Empire, newly independent territories and cities at the former imperial periphery are again in focus. Riga, today's capital of Latvia, belonged to the Russian Empire (1710-1917) and used to be one of imperial Russia's main ports. In the decade before World War I, Riga was the port with the highest turnover, surpassing both Odessa and the capital St. Petersburg. But Riga was never really a "Russian" city: before World War I, only 18 percent of its inhabitance were native Russian speakers. More important for its economic viability were its Latvian, German, and Jewish residents. This talk will map Riga as a port city and trading metropolis using research results obtained through GIS and archival research. It will also highlight the diversity of the people behind Riga's economic success.

- 1:00 pm
- 4130 Posvar Hall

- Geneveve Zubrzyski, Jose Casenova, Sean Guillory
- 12:00 pm to 1:30 pm
- Zoom
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.

- Tamara Scheer, Ana Sekulic
- 12:00 pm to 2:00 pm
- Zoom
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.

- 9:00 am
- Zoom
The University of Pittsburgh and the International Studies Consortium of Georgia (ISCOG) invite you to join the introductory session in an ongoing series focused on development, conservation, and sustainability contrasting dynamics and processes in different world regions. The sessions have been designed to help educators develop and enhance global content complementing their curricula. In addition to learning about thematic local/global intersections, educators will also explore Pitt’s Historical context, Ethics, Language proficiency, Media literacy, Social science methodologies (HELMS) framework for the area, and global studies. This series engages and promotes critical thinking about Amazonia’s current and future sustainability. We will work through approaches to the region’s role in water and food security, clean energy supplies, climate change, art, music, and cultural expressions. This collaborative series is funded through U.S. Department of Education National Resource Center grants. Participants will be able to learn about issues related to Amazonia, particularly related to development, sustainability, and conservation. Improve understanding of diversely different and clearly interconnected dynamics that affect daily lives all over the planet. This will allow educators to have resources at hand to teach in their classroom as well as satisfy the requirement of teaching to the standards. For questions, please email lavst12@pitt.edu

- Viktoria Batista
- 5:00 pm to 6:00 pm
- Cathedral of Learning 329

- Ana Sekulic and Ulzhan Tuleshova
- 12:00 pm to 1:30 pm
- 4130 Posvar Hall

- Marianne Kemp, Guidana Salimjan, James Pickett
- 11:00 am to 1:00 pm
- Zoom
The first hour of the workshop will be dedicated to properly archiving and analysing the results of an oral interview, with a particular focus on the opportunities and challenges that researchers face when doing oral history work in Central Asia. The second half of the workshop will be spent grappling with topics of accessibility, safety, complex insider-outsider positionally, multilingual note-taking, and translation, with a focus on the instructor's experience taking oral histories in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous region.

- Jolanta Lion
- 5:00 pm to 6:00 pm
- 1219 Cathedral of Learning

- 2:00 pm
- Charity Randall Theatre
The University Center for International Studies cordially invites students graduating in Spring and Summer 2023 to celebrate their academic achievements and receive their credentials at the University Center for International Studies’ Graduation Ceremony on Friday, April 29, 2-3pm in the Charity Randall Theater followed by a reception in the Cathedral Commons Room. Graduating students should look for their personal email invitations from the University Center for International Studies to RSVP and contact their UCIS academic advisor with any questions about the event. Reception to follow the ceremony.
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