Join the Department of French and Italian and Italian Film Festival USA for our exciting next installment of our annual film festival!

The Women Workers’ War, 7 p.m. April 10, Room 24, Ground Floor, Cathedral of Learning, 4200 Fifth Ave. A documentary recounting the story of two women: one who leads the longest factory sit-in by women in Italy and another who operates a factory that encourages cultural growth among the workers. This screening will feature a special appearance by director Massimo Ferrari.

Prof. John Palka's lecture will be based on his book that, while historical in essence, is refreshingly contemporary in its account of the past that his ancestors helped to shape. It contains vivid portraits of courage and love of freedom and country that will resonate with modern Slovak-Americans, it will connect them with the boarder story of their ancestors.

Join the Department of French and Italian and Italian Film Festival USA as we show our fourth Pittsburgh premiere film! La migliore offerta tells the story of a genius art expert - come enjoy it at the Carnegie Museum of Art's theater!

The Best Offer (La Migliore Offerta), 7 p.m. April 5, Carnegie Museum of Art Theatre, 4400 Forbes Ave. A world-renowned antiques auctioneer, who leads a solitary life, is appointed to oversee the sale of a beautiful heiress’ art collection and is soon engulfed by a passion that rocks his bland existence.

Given the German economy’s central role in the Euro Area, and Germany’s place as a strong business partner with the US and Pennsylvania, many people are interested in the characteristics of the German business model. Our panelists will discuss their experiences attracting German companies to the Pittsburgh region, partnering with them in transatlantic relationships, and tips for successful relationships with German companies and colleagues.

Panelists include: Jeffrey T. Deane, Managing Partner of BKD, LLP; Robert Dehm, of the Economic Department at the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany; Joe Peilert, President & CEO of VEKA Holdings; and Suzi Pegg, Vice President, Global Marketing, Pittsburgh Regional Alliance. Q & A will follow the presentations.

All are welcome! Lunch begins at 12:15pm, with the panel discussion to follow at 1pm.

The conference promotes evidence-based policy-making on environment and energy, drawing on policy experiences and research knowledge from the US and the EU. Specifically, the focus will be on the challenge of securing energy for economic growth while ensuring the protection of human health and the environment. The broader conference agenda examines the choice of the energy portfolio of various countries, and how trade-offs should be struck on the benefits and risks of various energy resources. The narrower agenda examines the development of shale gas, its benefits and potential risks, and strategies to mitigate these risks.

The conference is free and open to the public, but registration is required: http://tinyurl.com/lu2rujr.

The eighth edition of the Carnegie Mellon International Film Festival is dedicated to the legacy of world-renowned filmmaker, psychologist, and Carnegie Mellon professor, Paul Goodman, and to his professional focus on the human challenges and achievements of diverse groups of workers worldwide. Audiences will have the opportunity to explore "Faces of Work" through Paul's compelling short films along with the Pittsburgh premiere screenings of new, distinctive, and award-winning international films and documentaries from Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Sweden, Romania, Turkey, Poland, Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, France, Egypt, Chad, Iran, India, Japan, Vietnam, China, Canada, and the USA.

The Faces Festival is an annual celebration of international film and its potential to shine a light on the human faces involved in shaping our contemporary social landscape. Audiences are encouraged to explore the numerous complex themes of these films beyond the screenings themselves by participating in audience Q&A sessions with directors, artists, academics, and professionals; by engaging with interactive performances by student artists; and by sampling exotic foods and international cuisine from local eateries.

The Ukrainian Room Committee and the Nationality Rooms Program proudly present the
Taras Shevchenko 200th Anniversary Concert this Sunday, March 9th at 3 PM in the
Frick Fine Arts Auditorium.

Taras Shevchenko, born in 1814, was a Ukrainian poet, writer, artist, folklorist,
and ethnographer. Known for many masterpieces of painting and illustration, his
literary heritage is also regarded to be the foundation of modern Ukrainian
literature and language.

This event, featuring readings of Shevchenko's poetry, displays of his artwork, and
an opera performance, is free and open to the public. Donations are greatly
appreciated.

Do you consider yourself a very basic user of Facebook? Do you know the difference between Twitter and Tumblr? Have you tried to create a wiki for a class project, or does the very idea keep you up at night? Pitt’s international studies outreach program will host an interactive workshop to help teachers improve their use of social media websites and tools for education and personal use, including:

· Collaborative projects (for example, Wikispaces)
· Blogs and microblogs (for example, Twitter)
· Social news networking sites (for example, Reddit)
· Content communities (for example, YouTube)
· Social networking sites (for example, Facebook)

Participants are highly encouraged (but not required) to bring a laptop, tablet, or smartphone to this workshop in order to gain full hands-on experience in setting up user accounts, understanding how these sites can help or hinder educational projects, and explore what other educators have done to successfully add a social media dimension to school or personal projects.

Dinner and parking provided with registration.

Several of Pindar's victory odes contain mythical digressions that include a deceptive female character: the Hera-cloud in Pythian 2, Coronis in Pythian 3, and Hippolyta in Nemean 5. These figures reflect a deceptive, seductive female archetype established in earlier traditions (cf. Hesiod's Pandora, Semonides 7, Potiphar's wife), but the Pindaric examples are striking for the degree to which they are shaped to suit their particular generic context. As a genre predicated on reciprocity as its fundamental principle, epinician poetry depicts the deceptiveness of female figures as detrimental specifically to relationships based on mutual respect and exchange. These relationships parallel that between the poet and his patron. Pindar¹s adaptation of earlier archetypes demonstrates the influence that literary context can have on depictions of gender and suggests that awareness not only of historical but also of generic context must inform our understanding of gender.

It has long been observed that there is something comedic in the writings of Plato. Yet Plato’s dialogue with Greek Comedy is not limited to his colorful characters, unusual settings, and witty conversations: it is rather in exposing the pretensions of Athenian public figures that Plato and the writers of Old Comedy have perhaps the most in common. Between around 430 B.C. and the end of the fifth century, a series of intellectuals and educators were parodied on the comic stage, including of course Socrates, the target of what Aristophanes called his "most sophisticated" comedy: Clouds of 423 B.C. But despite this claim, Clouds belongs to a comic tradition about Socrates and his associates that is well attested in the fragmentary works of Aristophanes’ comedian-rivals. An examination of these lost comedies not only enables us to reconstruct a once-popular comic subgenre, but also deepens our understanding of the figure of Socrates and enriches our readings of the Platonic corpus.

In many ways, the EU appears to be in a period of transition: recovering from the financial crisis, continuing to implement the Lisbon Treaty’s provisions, and awaiting a new set of European elections. Have these developments produced change in the EU’s politics and policies, or has it been Brussels as usual? The Organizing Committee of the Ninth Annual Graduate Student Conference on the European Union welcomes graduate students from around the world to contribute to the theme of the conference, as well as others related to the EU.

In addition to panels at which students will present their work, two roundtables have been organized with help from co-sponsors the European Union Studies Association (EUSA) and the U.S. Network of European Union Centers of Excellence. The first roundtable will focus on the current state of EU studies. Panelists will include Michelle Cini (co-editor of JCMS), Alberta Sbragia (Vice-Provost and Professor of Political Science), and John Keeler (Dean of the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs). Professor Guy Peters (Political Science) will chair. The second roundtable will be discuss the ins and outs of the job search process. Erica Edwards, Executive Director of the EUCE at UNC-Chapel Hill, will chair.

The Keynote Address will be provided by Michelle Cini, University of Bristol. Her talk will be entitled: “Membership 'as usual': why Britain will (probably) stay in the European Union?”

They Odyssey has a dim or ironic view of epic glory. It holds up a mirror for an audience who has come to hear of such glory, and does so in moments that are virtuosic as scripts. We will perform a couple of these moments to better understand how they work on the stage, as opposed to the page. We will then turn to how Plato used one of them in his homage to the power of Homer, thinly disguised as a parody, in his Ion.

Globalization, transnationalism, planetarity designate as much cultural forces as economic and political. However these dynamics do not affect the planet equally; rather regions and areas have distinct profiles. This conference takes as its task the exploration of cultural unification fostered by the EU. The European Union has set as its primary goal the political, economic, and cultural union of Europe. This combination of goals makes the EU unique among the world’s transnational organizations. Indeed, while many organizations have arisen to foster global free trade arrangements or international treaties, nowhere is there an equivalent focus on fostering a common culture. Along with attention to the cultural production compelled by the EU in the current moment, the conference will of necessity attend to the geographic and historical complexities of European cultural unification. Panels and presentations will be open to the public.

Medieval Arabic sources are replete with stories about Muslims traveling far and wide. The abundance of such examples tempts one to believe that these traveling individuals created and maintained the pan-Islamic cultural commonwealth. Yet the Islamic written legacy is so vast that drawing decisive conclusions that traveling was indeed as widespread as our sources suggest is hardly possible. This presentation describes the use of computer-assisted research methods to enable an analysis of 29,000 biographies drawn from the massive 50-volume Taʾrīkh al-islām (“The History of Islam”), written by the Damascene historian al-Dhahabī (d. 748/1348).

The Department of History European Colloquium presents Emanuela Grama, Carnegie Mellon University. Presenters: Andrew Behrendt and Adelina Stefan. Emanuela Grama from Carnegie Mellon University will be the main commentator on their papers and presentations.

Professor O’Callaghan explores the role of collective memory in the Eurozone crisis from a lawyer's perspective. The idea of collective memory features prominently in several disciplines but rarely in legal scholarship. He argues that the idea of collective memory can help us to better understand fundamental aspects of the EU Treaty framework and secondary legislation, and may also provide instructive insights about the policy responses to the Eurozone crisis.

This will be an information session for those interested in teaching English abroad on. Pitt Alumni will present on their experiences teaching in France, Chile, and China.

This is an information session for those interested in a career with the U.S. State department. It will cover how to apply, information on their internship program and various career opportunities.

After the arrival of MTV in the 1990s, Eurovision also influenced trends in Russian popular music. A performance by the Russian band, t.A.T.u., in the song contest in 2003 triggered international controversy and, at the same time, set the model for emerging patterns and trends in the popular music community. Russian popular music and music video aesthetics are still influenced by the performance at Eurovision ten years ago. It is worth examining, therefore, the ways in which the politics of Eurovision still influence Russian popular music and music video aesthetics.

To read a good book is like going to a great party. You are aesthetically
entertained, meet new and interesting people and, in an ideal world, witness some
real human drama fueled by the side effects of euphoria and excess. When transformed
into literature, parties are one of the most challenging topics of writing. In the
autonomous zone of celebration, world apart from daily life and routines, a writer,
just like any other guest, has to survey multitudes of synchronized social action to
stay on top of things. His task: to enjoy himself and please the reader at the same
time while being ahead of the crowd. Therefore the feast in literature can be read
as a playground to show narrative skills at work. The lecture will discuss the
stylistic and strategic approach towards parties in a few central texts of 20th
century literature from Thomas Mann to F. Scott Fitzgerald.

This is an information session for those interested in community service opportunities after graduation in the United States and abroad. There will be representatives and alumni from organizations including PULSE, the Peace Corps, City Year, and Omprakash who will share their experiences and present on how to apply and what to expect.

The European Union Center of Excellence & European Studies Center is pleased to present the first Spring 2014 Conversations on Europe Videoconference.
Panelists will discuss the 2004 enlargement, which witnessed the growth of the EU from 15 member states to 25, and assess the impact of that expansion on the entering member states and the institutions of the European Union.
Participants will include Geoffrey Harris (European Parliament Liaison Office), Zoltan Barany (University of Texas), Jacques Rupnik (Sciences Po), Carolyn Ban (GSPIA), and Andrew Konitzer (REES, Political Science). Ron Linden, Director of the EUCE/ESC, will moderate.
Video recordings of previous Conversations on Europe, as well as a copy of the full Spring semester schedule can be found on the EUCE/ESC Website. To learn how to become involved, please email Dr. Allyson Delnore, Associate Director of the Center.

Professor Cabot reflects on how asylum, humanitarian aid and radical migrant politics reconfigure the relationship between rights and political recognition, amid rapidly changing conceptions of citizenship in Greece. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2005 and 2011, Dr. Cabot shows how humanitarian aid encounters provide venues for dialogical forms of negotiation, miscommunication, recognition, and misrecognition between aid workers and clients, as well as for potentially transformative social ties. She is visiting the University of Pittsburgh as a candidate for a position in the Department of Anthropology.

Ambassador Pavilionis visits the Center to reflect on the Lithuanian Presidency of the Council of the European Union—the first time the Presidency has been held by a state that emerged from the USSR--and to share his ideas about the future of the EU and Lithuania’s relationship with its fellow EU member states. Refreshments will be served.

Mental Illness is one of the top public health challenges in Europe as measured by prevalence, burden of disease and disability. It is estimated that mental disorders affect more than a third of the population every year, the most common being depression and anxiety. Featuring experts from Scotland, this presentation aims to describe how the Scottish government is tackling mental health and related issues, as understanding grows and the stigma of mental illness is decreasing.

Annunziata (Ann) Ugas, a visiting MA-level student from the University of Cagliari in Italy (Sardegna) and Center Associate within the European Union Center of Excellence, has been working on her translation studies while at the University of Pittsburgh. She will offer a talk based on her research. She will discuss the challenges of translating a parodic text (Barry Trotter and the Unauthorized Parody), and Professor Dennis Looney (French & Italian) and Professor Carol Bové (English) will respond to Ann’s presentation.

This conference features keynote speaker Ambassador Peter Tomsen (GSPIA ’64), Former U.S. Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Author of "The Wars of Afghanistan". An R.S.V.P. is required. To attend, please email Beverly Brizzi by Monday, December 2nd, to confirm your registration.

Join the Center as we enjoy pizza and politics during the lunch hour for a discussion offered by Center Library Research Advisor, Evgeny Postnikov. His talk will focus on the bilateral preferential trade agreements (PTAs) of the European Union (EU) and the United States, which are increasingly being used as vehicles for exporting social regulation, such as labor and environmental standards. Despite the similarity in terms of the inclusion of such provisions, design varies greatly between U.S. and EU agreements. Postnikov examines the disparity between both parties’ execution of these PTAs with paired cases of EU-Chile, U.S.-Chile, EU-South Korea, and U.S.-South Korea PTAs, relying on data from interviews with interest groups and policy-makers in Brussels, Washington, Santiago, and Seoul. PIZZA WILL BE SERVED.

February 19, 2013, Newsweek published an article that was provocatively titled “France: Leader of the Free World.” Even more provocatively, the subtitle taunted U.S. leaders with “The French are a decisive, manly superpower. Unlike America.” Gendered rhetoric aside, French foreign policy in recent years has led other powers to take note. Rather than waiting for collective decisions from NATO or the EU and citing historical interests in the region, the French intervened in Libya and the Ivory Coast under President Sarkozy and Mali under President Hollande. As a result, the French have reaffirmed claims to a special role in Africa. Is this a new assertion of Gaullism? Or are claims of French world leadership exaggerated or even undermined by domestic concerns over rising unemployment, growing right-wing nationalism in response to immigration from North and West Africa, and increasing market instability? In the next Conversation on Europe, a panel of experts will be asked to comment on recent developments in French foreign policy and how they relate to domestic and regional concerns. Joining the conversation will be Professor Laird Boswell (History, University of Wisconsin-Madison), Professor Jean-Philippe Mathy (French, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), and David Pettersen (French & Italian, University of Pittsburgh). The Conversation will be conducted entirely in French and audience participation will be encouraged. Venez nous joindre pour une discussion qui sera certainement informative et très animée!

Mircea Geoana served as President of the Romanian Senate from 2008 to 2011 and Chairman of the Social Democratic Party from 2005 to 2011. In 2009 he was a candidate for President of the country. He has served as Ambassador to the United States and as Chair in Office of the OSCE. Goeana’s views on foreign policy, transitional economies and globalization have been featured in the New York Times, International Herald Tribune, The Atlantic, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, CNN, BBC, PBS, Bloomberg, TV5 and Fox Business.

Stay tuned for fun events all week!

Stay tuned for fun events all week!

Stay tuned for fun events all week!

Stay tuned for fun events all week!

Stay tuned for fun events all week!