Past Events

The High School Model European Union is an annual event for high school students, with this year's simulation taking place virtually via Microsoft Teams. The goal of the Model EU is to give high school students the opportunity to learn about the workings of the European Union through a hands-on simulation of a meeting of the European Council. Playing the role of presidents and prime ministers, students spend a day engaged in intense negotiations over current issues impacting the EU. Registration Deadline: Wednesday, October 28, 2020 Cost: $10/student More information and Registration: https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/esc/outreach/students/model-eu

As part of the Year of Creating Europe, previous sessions have focused on different attempts to create unity through diversity across Europe. In this session, the focus is on Scandinavia. Our panel of experts discuss how this region created social cohesion and costs and benefits that come with it. In its efforts to make a nation that is diverse but coalesces, how has Scandinavia been able to create trust in it's institutions? Register Here: https://pitt.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_XYToCOtmTFS77ljMKleb7Q

France is often portrayed as a case of color-blind civic ‘assimilation’ despite a shift to ‘integration’ since the 1980s. However, the creation of institutions such as the High Council for Integration (1989-2013) and the first ever census-based survey on the assimilation of immigrants and their France-born children (Mobilité géographique et insertion sociale, Tribalat 1993) signaled starting from the 1990s the foregrounding of cultural differentiation in public life and the promotion of ethnic origin as a framework and primary principle of classification (Bertaux 2016:1496). In this process, integration came to be perceived as a one-way ticket for ‘ethnic Others of foreign descent’ to embrace the cultural values and institutions of a purportedly homogeneous ‘non-ethnic’ core of Français de souche (‘French of French stock’). Papers in this panel argue that race/ethnic relations in France today have inherited this ideology. They show that audible characteristics of local French, a shared linguistic heritage in Marseilles, are dismissed in the speech of working-class youth (Evers), historically attested pronunciation features are recast as multiethnic innovations in working-class Parisian French (Fagyal), years of ‘banlieue literature’ addressing the themes of race and citizenship have suffered from distorted representations in the media (Horvath), and entire segments of the French population now consider themselves Citizen Outsiders for whom the cultural characteristics of the ‘uniform whiteness’ of the Français de souche remain largely alien (Beaman). The panel casts light on the utopia of a color-blind French Republic that, in its efforts at treating citizens equally before the law, makes it impossible for them to belong.   Panelists: Jean Beaman, University of California Santa-Barbara Cécile Evers Cecile, Pomona College Zsuzsanna Fagyal , University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Christina Horvath, University of Bath Register Here: https://pitt.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_XG-B5qdrTrWrrIS09NaG2A

Internationalize your career-focused courses with the BETH (Business, Energy, Technology, and Health) series. For year 3 of our faculty development workshops for community colleges and minority-serving institutions, the University Center for International Studies at the University of Pittsburgh is offering a series of monthly webinars focused on technology. Our second webinar will examine Technology in the Time of COVID, specifically addressing international responses to the pandemic regarding efforts to mitigate community spread through contact-tracing. Presenters are: Dr. June Park, 2020-2021 East Asia Voices Initiative Fellow, East Asia National Resource Center, Elliot School of International Affairs, The George Washington University. Dr. Dev Lewis, Fellow and Program Lead at Digital Asia Hub Jared Kohler, Systems Engineer, Carnegie Mellon University CREATE Lab Register here

Throughout our history, art and artists have resisted oppression, violence, injustice, and inequality. Some of the world’s most interesting art is on the streets and easily accessible to all. In this workshop we will discuss how protest art uses public space to engage in dialogue between the artist and the public. At an unprecedented moment in geopolitics, the work of public artists amplifies activism, resistance, and solidarity. Artists give context and vision to broad social movements, supporting those who have been marginalized and who need justice. Artists around the world question what is and why that transcends national boundaries and politics . We will examine works of Ai Wei Wei, Keith Herring, murals from Northern Ireland, to the Black Lives movement. Friday, November 13 6:00 - 8:30 pm (Eastern Time) Jerome 'Chu' Charles: "Waking Up With 'Chu' - My Road to the Black Lives Matter Movement" Michael-Ann Cerniglia: "Teacher led session: Creative Resistance Case Studies for the K-12 Classroom" To learn more, please visit our website: https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/ncta/ Register here!

Join us for a roundtable discussion of the state of the transatlantic relationship in the wake of the U.S. Presidential Elections. Featuring: Dr. James Goldgeier, American University (NATO and security),  Mr. Ignacio Garcia-Bercero, DG Trade (former TTIP chief negotiator), Dr. Mai’a Cross, Northeastern University (Europe and the Politics of Crisis). Moderated by Steven Sokol (American Council on Germany). Hosted by the European Studies Center at the University of Pittsburgh, the Center for Transatlantic Studies at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the Transatlantic Policy Center at American University. This event is part of the #JMintheUS event series, an initiative of Jean Monnet Centers in the U.S. https://pitt.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_LvStS_L3RTWaAYZwgEdx3w