Lecture

Victoria Harms, Associate Teaching Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University and author of the book The Making of Dissidents: Hungary's Democratic Opposition and Its Western Friends, 1973-1998, in conversation with Gregor Thum, Associate Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh. Interview followed by live audience Q&A. Introduction by Kati R. Csoman, Director of the Nationality Rooms and Intercultural Exchange Programs.

This event is part of a two-day series focusing on sustainability in Europe and Pittsburgh. About the Keynote Speaker: Jesko Hirschfeld studied economics at the universities of Bonn, Frankfurt am Main, and the Free University of Berlin. From 1996 to 1998, he worked as a scientific staff member for the German Federal Parliament (Bundestag), and from 1998 to 2002, he worked on his doctorate with a scholarship by the German Research Foundation (DFG) in the Research Training Group “Agriculture and Environment” at the University of Göttingen.

Join us for an event featuring Noémie Ndiaye, Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Chicago, whose research focuses on early modern English, French, and Spanish theater with an emphasis on race. Ndiaye will discuss her award-winning book, Scripts of Blackness: Early Modern Performance Culture and the Making of Race (2022), which explores how performance culture influenced the construction of race in early modern Europe. Her book has received multiple prestigious awards, including the 2023 Bevington Award and the 2023 Rose Mary Crawshay Prize.

Dr. Sajić served as the ambassador of Bosnia and Herzegovina to France, UNESCO, Algeria, Monaco, Andorra and Romania. She was also a foreign policy advisor in the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina. She will be at Pitt to discuss her diplomatic experiences with students and the wider community. Light lunch will be provided.

In the interwar period, a Polish Consulate served Pittsburgh's sizeable population with Polish roots. The last consul before the Second World War was Heliodor Sztark, who came to Pittsburgh in 1938, together with his wife, Aniela and their younger daughter Nina. All three became active public figures within the Polish community, the city of Pittsburgh, and Pitt. After the war, Heliodor resigned from his post because he did not agree with the new Polish government. The family settled in Texas, where they started a new life under very difficult conditions.

Please note a change of time: Keynote Speaker for the Undergraduate Research Symposium: The Discussion will explore one of the means by which primarily young people in West Germany attempted to “revolutionize” everyday life and beyond, through new, explicitly political forms of cohabitation designated Wohngemeinschaften (WGs).

As part of the Unmasking Prejudice: Confronting Antisemitism, Islamophobia, and Racism Across Europe Spring Lecture Series Lecture Summary: TBD About the Speaker: Kirsten Wesselhoeft is associate professor of religion at Vassar College. She is a scholar of contemporary Islam, drawing on ethnography and political analysis to study Muslim thought and culture in contexts shaped by colonial encounters and secular liberalism.

As part of the Unmasking Prejudice: Confronting Antisemitism, Islamophobia, and Racism Across Europe Spring Lecture Series: For about 25 years, a minority security dilemma has been crystalizing in Germany. With increasing Muslim immigration, the state has gradually instituted measures to acculturate this small but growing minority to the official memory culture centered on the Holocaust.

Orthodox Christianity first came to Central Asia along with the Russian conquest in the 19th century. Along with Slavic settlers came Orthodox sacred objects, such as miraculous icons and the relics of saints. Churches, monasteries, and parish communities were build around these objects. During the colonisation process, control over Orthodox sacred objects was contested by the imperial regime, settler communities, and the native population.

Join our upcoming ValEUs Lecture on “European Values in the EU´s Developmental, Energy and Climate Policies” with Randall Halle. Halle directs the European Studies Center and is a Klaus W. Jonas Professor of German Film and Cultural Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. The event is organised by the Institute for European Studies of the European University Viadrina (IFES) as a collaboration between its Talk Series “Human & Planet” and the “ValEUs Lecture Series”. Funded by the European Union.