College-bound minority students from Brashear High School learned about international studies and career opportunities through a panel session with Pitt study abroad returnees and breakout sessions with UCIS international studies advisors.

Dr. Martens is Chief Executive of The European Policy Centre, a Brussels-based think tank set up to promote European integration. He is the founder of Martens International Consulting, specializing in international consultancy and customized training for a number of major companies, and the author of a number of books and articles on European integration, monetary affairs, and business strategies for the European market. Questioning whether Europe finally has the Euro crises under control, Martens will also present his analysis of the future direction of European integration.

Irepoglu discusses her dissertation which combines the literatures of 'fiscal decentralization' and 'governance' in searching for determinants of income inequality. It argues that fiscal decentralization makes inequality more likely while the interactive nature of governance offsets this effect. Building on the author's earlier quantitative work, it compares findings from field work conducted in Spain –a country with low interactive governance-and in Sweden–a country with high interactive governance.

Professor Vassallo’s research focuses on political behavior, French and European Union politics, and EU identity. In her lecture, she will highlight the possible solutions to declining EU support levels in other EU member states, addressing how European integration can still retain a mostly positive image in the eyes of elites and citizens in the EU when there is a clear commitment to the original integration project.

The second of the EUCE's 2013-2014 interactive Conversations on Europe Virtual Roundtable Series. Turkey’s likely future and its relation to Europe can be seen in several dimensions. Probably best known and easiest to track is its long-running pursuit of membership in the European Union. But Turkey’s geographic and historic position has also drawn it into—and pushed it away from--the rapidly changing dynamics of the Middle East. It is one of NATO’s oldest members but has signed onto virtually all of Russia’s energy initiatives in the region. It is an enthusiastic diplomatic and economic entrepreneur in the Balkans but carries with it an Ottoman legacy that not everyone there welcomes. In addition, if Europe represents a mode of governance and norms of regime-society relations, where does Turkey lie along these dimensions of democracy and human rights protection? The unveiling of democratic reform packages must be seen against a background of widespread protests and fierce government response this past spring. Is the decade-long rule of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the Law and Justice Party leading to a “European” future or something else? Panelists in this videoconference Conversation will be invited to address whichever aspect of this question they see as most compelling and attendees will be encouraged to participate.

Learn more about DAAD programs for both undergraduates and graduates, and for German speaking and non-German speaking students. Dr. Wezel will discuss a variety of research, study, and internship DAAD scholarships that can fund up to 2 years of research or graduate study. For scholarship requirements and deadlines, please reference the DAAD’s website, which also includes information for the summer internship program with RISE (Research Internships in Science and Engineering). To R.S.V.P., please email Judy Zang at jaz36@pitt.edu.

A pre-cursor to the dramatic story-telling of Carlo Collodi's "The Adventure of Pinocchio", Professor Sherberg’s offers a deeper narrative to what is often singularly considered to be a children's tale.

Nuala Mole is a human rights lawyer and advocate who has led two pro bono legal advice and advocacy organizations: Interrights and the AIRE Centre, which she founded. Mole initially specialized in immigration and asylum but now her work encompasses all aspects of international human rights law. Mole has conducted training for the Council of Europe, the European Commission and the AIRE Centre for judges, public officials, lawyers, and NGOs in over 40 of the 46 member states of the Council of Europe. In addition to training in Europe, Mole has worked extensively with judicial training in the Balkans.

Professor Pahl will offer an additional colloquium that focuses on the emotionality of paragraphs 166 through 196 of Hegel’s "Phenomenology of Spirit". For more information or scans of these passages, please send an email requesting copies to grmndept@pitt.edu. Cookies and drinks will be provided.

Professor Pahl approaches the German literary and philosophical canon from a queer-feminist perspective, with the arc of her research situated in affect and emotion studies. She edited the Modern Language Notes 2009 issue on Emotionality, and she was awarded the Best Article in Feminist Scholarship Prize from the Coalition of Women in German for “Transformative Translations: Cyrillizing and Queering.” In this lecture, Pahl will explore Heinrich von Kleist's “Anekdote aus dem letzten Kriege” (“Anecdote from the Recent War”). The lecture is in English. Copies of the anecdote in German and English will be provided.

Enlargement posed a serious challenge for the European Commission, which set as a goal bringing on board thousands of new staff. How successful was the Commission in meeting this challenge? And how successful were the newcomers in integrating in to the organization? Now, after several years, can we see that the staff from Central and East European countries have had an impact on the organization? Answering these questions sheds new light on the evolution of the Commission’s organizational culture which Ban, author of the new book analyzing these questions, will discuss. LUNCH WILL BE PROVIDED. RSVPs to euce@pitt.edu appreciated.

The first of the EUCE/ESC's Pizza and Politics discussions of the year, GSPIA's EU and the World Organization's executive members talk about their experience interviewing policy-makers, EU civil servants, and visiting major institutions in Brussels and Luxembourg as participants in the EU in Brussels Program, co-sponsored by Pitt's EUCE/ESC and GSPIA. Also learn about getting involved in the EU and the World Organization and about other upcoming EU Studies opportunities at Pitt! PIZZA WILL BE SERVED.

After a decade of experiments with different techniques, in 1930s Soviet animation began a transformation to celluloid and aesthetics of social realism. However, interpretation of socialist realist aesthetic in animation turned out to be rather problematic, especially considering the influence of American animation, Disney in particular. The paper will look at the question of realism in animation, and will consider the attempts of Soviet critics and animation directors in 1930s to delineate socialist realism in animation, and to develop a type of image that could be considered consistent with the requirements of socialist realist aesthetics.

Toker led excavations of the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, Italy from 1970-1974 and again in 1980, which led to discoveries about the tombs of the great Italian artists Giotto and Filippo Brunelleschi, as well as facts about Saint Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan. In light of his more recent discoveries, his lecture will focus on a horseshoe-shaped pool uncovered during the 1912 excavations under the Baptistery of St. John, which Toker has realized could be the archaeological remains of a place in which to hold a baptism, and therefore suggesting the archaeological evidence for the origin of Christianity in Florence. He is documenting his findings in a four-volume "Florence Duomo Project" being published by Brepols Publishers.

Ms. Malin Olofsson is a Transatlantic Media Fellow (at the Center for Strategic & International Studies in D.C.) and a reporter for Sveriges Radio, Sweden’s national radio network. Malin's interests lie within the environment, climate change, and sustainability, and she plans to use her experience as an investigative reporter to talk about food production from a human rights and environmental perspective. She has won numerous national awards, most recently “The Great Journalism Prize of Sweden – 2011," and was listed in 2011 as one of the 100 most important people in Sweden in the discussion of environmental issues and the food debate. While in the United States, Malin plans to research how moves toward a more sustainable society will affect American transportation, with a particular focus on the oil debate.

Week-long professional development workshop on global human rights and cultural diversity for faculty from various Midwestern community colleges and small four-year colleges.

In 1973, the European Community introduced the concept of European identity in order to define and strengthen its position vis-à-vis other countries, and in world politics more broadly. Over time, it has become clear that European identity has to do much more with the presence of European otherness and ‘Others’, such as Muslims in Western Europe. In his talk, Professor Radeljic will address the (ir)relevance of the European identity discourse for European national identities and members of European otherness. Moreover, he will outline a number of possible challenges to a European identity, posed by some recent policy choices as well as future of the European Union. Professor Radeljic visits Pitt as a recipient of the Summer Research Scholars Grant and is the author of Europe and the Collapse of Yugoslavia: The Role of Non-State Actors and European Diplomacy (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2012), and the editor of Europe and the Post-Yugoslav Space (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013) and Debating European Identity: Bright Ideas, Dim Prospects (Oxford: Peter Lang, forthcoming 2014). LUNCH will be provided.

Organized in collaboration with Wulf Reiners of the Jean Monnet Chair for Political Science of the University of Cologne, the workshop will serve to bring together practitioners and academic scholars to discuss the collaboration of state and non-state actors, such as the European Union, as well as those from civil society, within the system of global health governance. Participants will include Bernard Merkel, European External Action Service, who works on Food Safety, Health and Consumer Affairs at the EU Delegation of the EU to the USA in Washington; Donald Burke, Dean, Graduate School of Public Health; Guy Peters, Department of Political Science; and Nidhi Bouri and Amesh Adalja, of UPMC Health Security.

As a part of Europe Day celebrations, EUCE connected with Sunnyside Elementary. We presented information on the EU to two 6th grade classes.

Presentation to a Montessori mixed age classroom of 3-year-olds, 4-year-olds, and kindergarteners about the European Union - an introduction. The students were given individual "passports" and then pretended to visit Europe. They learned that they would only get one stamp when they got to Europe, no matter how many different countries they visited. The students are given regular instruction in the continents and could all name countries in Europe. They learned that some of those countries were member states, some were not. And then they learned about the euro and the different designs that appear on euro coins were compared to the different state's designs on U.S. quarters. They were able to hold and play with euro notes and coins.

A continuation of the conversation begun by PICT Theatre's production of Tadeusz Slobodzianek's play Our Class,/i>, and featuring noted Princeton historian Dr. Jan T. Gross, whose book Neighbors inspired the play. Join us for a compelling discussion.

Haven't seen the play? Our Class runs through May 4th. Use code PANEL55 for Buy-One-Get-One-Free tickets at picttheatre.org or call 412-561-6000.

RSVP requested: https://picttheatre.secure.force.com/ticket/

Science, Culture, and the Human after World War II

The definition of the human is always in flux. Science offers no absolute account of “human nature”; even the species definition can be contested. The idea of human rights has faltered not only on what counts as rights and who can enforce them, but also on who is entitled to them: on who counts as “human.” Despite the instability of its definition, the human has long been a foundational term for theories of social justice. What happens, then, when scientific innovations and geopolitical transformations conspicuously challenge the definition of the human? These seminars will focus on the scientific and technological innovations and the geopolitical transformations in the decades following the World War II.

Political theorists as diverse as Hannah Arendt and Frantz Fanon decried the failure of the concept of human rights and called for new formulations of the human. At the same time, the biologist Rachel Carson cautioned of the contamination and exhaustion of natural resources endangering life on a planetary scale. The genre of science fiction proliferated in this period as it engaged with the scientific innovations and geopolitical transformations that placed the idea of the human in question. The narratives emerging from these works, philosophical and fictional, offer insight into a politics and poetics of life that continue to structure twenty-first debates about science and politics; they will be the subject of this seminar.

In these seminars, we will consider a broad range of works, across genres, media, and cultures. We will explore connections among concepts such as “human rights” and the changing idea of “human being” as it emerged through scientific research especially in fields renovated (or generated) by the war, such as genetics, cybernetics, and psychoanalysis. We will consider how the effort to come to terms with the unthinkable in a variety of arenas gave rise not only to new anxieties about the future (and accompanying recasting of the past), but also to new ways of thinking about the connections among artistic expression, cultural criticism, freedom, and human possibility.
Readings may include works by such authors as Paul Celan, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Hannah Arendt, Antonin Artaud, Erwin Schrödinger, Norbert Wiener, John Hersey, Rachel Carson, Johan Galtung, Stokely Carmichael, Martin Luther King, Octavia Butler and such films as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Manchurian Candidate, and Blade Runner.

*Please register by e-mailing: Ms. Tory Konecny vad16@pitt.edu.*
**followed by lunch for participants**

Science, Culture, and the Human after World War II

The definition of the human is always in flux. Science offers no absolute account of “human nature”; even the species definition can be contested. The idea of human rights has faltered not only on what counts as rights and who can enforce them, but also on who is entitled to them: on who counts as “human.” Despite the instability of its definition, the human has long been a foundational term for theories of social justice. What happens, then, when scientific innovations and geopolitical transformations conspicuously challenge the definition of the human? These seminars will focus on the scientific and technological innovations and the geopolitical transformations in the decades following the World War II.

Political theorists as diverse as Hannah Arendt and Frantz Fanon decried the failure of the concept of human rights and called for new formulations of the human. At the same time, the biologist Rachel Carson cautioned of the contamination and exhaustion of natural resources endangering life on a planetary scale. The genre of science fiction proliferated in this period as it engaged with the scientific innovations and geopolitical transformations that placed the idea of the human in question. The narratives emerging from these works, philosophical and fictional, offer insight into a politics and poetics of life that continue to structure twenty-first debates about science and politics; they will be the subject of this seminar.

In these seminars, we will consider a broad range of works, across genres, media, and cultures. We will explore connections among concepts such as “human rights” and the changing idea of “human being” as it emerged through scientific research especially in fields renovated (or generated) by the war, such as genetics, cybernetics, and psychoanalysis. We will consider how the effort to come to terms with the unthinkable in a variety of arenas gave rise not only to new anxieties about the future (and accompanying recasting of the past), but also to new ways of thinking about the connections among artistic expression, cultural criticism, freedom, and human possibility.
Readings may include works by such authors as Paul Celan, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Hannah Arendt, Antonin Artaud, Erwin Schrödinger, Norbert Wiener, John Hersey, Rachel Carson, Johan Galtung, Stokely Carmichael, Martin Luther King, Octavia Butler and such films as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Manchurian Candidate, and Blade Runner.

*Please register by e-mailing: Ms. Tory Konecny vad16@pitt.edu.*
**followed by lunch for participants**

In recent years, the area of the Black Sea region has seen several momentous changes, including: the emergence of several new states—some as a result of violent conflict; the appearance of a variety of governing systems, nominally based on democratic models but varying widely in terms of the practices of democracy; the end of the long-standing status quo of the Cold War with a resulting change of alliance patterns; and increasing prominence of a European, and Russian, energy highway. This conference will draw together experts from the United States and Europe to assess both the nature and impact of global changes on the Black Sea region and the responses of powerful international actors. A series of workshops sessions will cover, among other topics, the military, economic, ethnic-religious and energy dynamics of the Black Sea region and the strategic responses of the United States, European Union, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine. For more information, please email the EUCE/ESC at euce@pitt.edu or call 412-648-7405. More information, including a draft of the program, can be found on the EUCE/ESC website.

Science, Culture, and the Human after World War II

The definition of the human is always in flux. Science offers no absolute account of “human nature”; even the species definition can be contested. The idea of human rights has faltered not only on what counts as rights and who can enforce them, but also on who is entitled to them: on who counts as “human.” Despite the instability of its definition, the human has long been a foundational term for theories of social justice. What happens, then, when scientific innovations and geopolitical transformations conspicuously challenge the definition of the human? These seminars will focus on the scientific and technological innovations and the geopolitical transformations in the decades following the World War II.

Political theorists as diverse as Hannah Arendt and Frantz Fanon decried the failure of the concept of human rights and called for new formulations of the human. At the same time, the biologist Rachel Carson cautioned of the contamination and exhaustion of natural resources endangering life on a planetary scale. The genre of science fiction proliferated in this period as it engaged with the scientific innovations and geopolitical transformations that placed the idea of the human in question. The narratives emerging from these works, philosophical and fictional, offer insight into a politics and poetics of life that continue to structure twenty-first debates about science and politics; they will be the subject of this seminar.

In these seminars, we will consider a broad range of works, across genres, media, and cultures. We will explore connections among concepts such as “human rights” and the changing idea of “human being” as it emerged through scientific research especially in fields renovated (or generated) by the war, such as genetics, cybernetics, and psychoanalysis. We will consider how the effort to come to terms with the unthinkable in a variety of arenas gave rise not only to new anxieties about the future (and accompanying recasting of the past), but also to new ways of thinking about the connections among artistic expression, cultural criticism, freedom, and human possibility.
Readings may include works by such authors as Paul Celan, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Hannah Arendt, Antonin Artaud, Erwin Schrödinger, Norbert Wiener, John Hersey, Rachel Carson, Johan Galtung, Stokely Carmichael, Martin Luther King, Octavia Butler and such films as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Manchurian Candidate, and Blade Runner.

*Please register by e-mailing: Ms. Tory Konecny vad16@pitt.edu.*
**followed by lunch for participants**

Science, Culture, and the Human after World War II

The definition of the human is always in flux. Science offers no absolute account of “human nature”; even the species definition can be contested. The idea of human rights has faltered not only on what counts as rights and who can enforce them, but also on who is entitled to them: on who counts as “human.” Despite the instability of its definition, the human has long been a foundational term for theories of social justice. What happens, then, when scientific innovations and geopolitical transformations conspicuously challenge the definition of the human? These seminars will focus on the scientific and technological innovations and the geopolitical transformations in the decades following the World War II.

Political theorists as diverse as Hannah Arendt and Frantz Fanon decried the failure of the concept of human rights and called for new formulations of the human. At the same time, the biologist Rachel Carson cautioned of the contamination and exhaustion of natural resources endangering life on a planetary scale. The genre of science fiction proliferated in this period as it engaged with the scientific innovations and geopolitical transformations that placed the idea of the human in question. The narratives emerging from these works, philosophical and fictional, offer insight into a politics and poetics of life that continue to structure twenty-first debates about science and politics; they will be the subject of this seminar.

In these seminars, we will consider a broad range of works, across genres, media, and cultures. We will explore connections among concepts such as “human rights” and the changing idea of “human being” as it emerged through scientific research especially in fields renovated (or generated) by the war, such as genetics, cybernetics, and psychoanalysis. We will consider how the effort to come to terms with the unthinkable in a variety of arenas gave rise not only to new anxieties about the future (and accompanying recasting of the past), but also to new ways of thinking about the connections among artistic expression, cultural criticism, freedom, and human possibility.
Readings may include works by such authors as Paul Celan, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Hannah Arendt, Antonin Artaud, Erwin Schrödinger, Norbert Wiener, John Hersey, Rachel Carson, Johan Galtung, Stokely Carmichael, Martin Luther King, Octavia Butler and such films as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Manchurian Candidate, and Blade Runner.

*Please register by e-mailing: Ms. Tory Konecny vad16@pitt.edu.*
**followed by lunch for participants**

Science, Culture, and the Human after World War II

The definition of the human is always in flux. Science offers no absolute account of “human nature”; even the species definition can be contested. The idea of human rights has faltered not only on what counts as rights and who can enforce them, but also on who is entitled to them: on who counts as “human.” Despite the instability of its definition, the human has long been a foundational term for theories of social justice. What happens, then, when scientific innovations and geopolitical transformations conspicuously challenge the definition of the human? These seminars will focus on the scientific and technological innovations and the geopolitical transformations in the decades following the World War II.

Political theorists as diverse as Hannah Arendt and Frantz Fanon decried the failure of the concept of human rights and called for new formulations of the human. At the same time, the biologist Rachel Carson cautioned of the contamination and exhaustion of natural resources endangering life on a planetary scale. The genre of science fiction proliferated in this period as it engaged with the scientific innovations and geopolitical transformations that placed the idea of the human in question. The narratives emerging from these works, philosophical and fictional, offer insight into a politics and poetics of life that continue to structure twenty-first debates about science and politics; they will be the subject of this seminar.

In these seminars, we will consider a broad range of works, across genres, media, and cultures. We will explore connections among concepts such as “human rights” and the changing idea of “human being” as it emerged through scientific research especially in fields renovated (or generated) by the war, such as genetics, cybernetics, and psychoanalysis. We will consider how the effort to come to terms with the unthinkable in a variety of arenas gave rise not only to new anxieties about the future (and accompanying recasting of the past), but also to new ways of thinking about the connections among artistic expression, cultural criticism, freedom, and human possibility.
Readings may include works by such authors as Paul Celan, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Hannah Arendt, Antonin Artaud, Erwin Schrödinger, Norbert Wiener, John Hersey, Rachel Carson, Johan Galtung, Stokely Carmichael, Martin Luther King, Octavia Butler and such films as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Manchurian Candidate, and Blade Runner.

*Please register by e-mailing: Ms. Tory Konecny vad16@pitt.edu.*
**followed by lunch for participants**

This is an interdisciplinary seminar, drawing students from art history, films studies, anthropology, and creative writing, which has investigated the role of death and mortality in the formation and transformation of culture. The course is organized around the new constellation structure of HAA, focusing on the conceptual frameworks of agency, identity, and mobility/exchange.

Twelve students will be presenting their research on topics spanning the ancient world to the present, Asia to Europe to the U.S. The atmosphere will be informal and students will be available concurrently, four at any given time, to discuss their research. Each of them will have the chance to give a short "TED talk" of 8 to 10 minutes at least twice during their round, leaving ample time for discussion with those who drop by.

In February President Obama announced the beginning of negotiations designed to produce a US-EU Free Trade Agreement. Mutual tariffs are already low and trade high; business and labor constituents seem supportive, and officials are eager to conclude this agreement “on one tank of gas,” i.e., quickly. But significant issues will be in play, including: opening markets for agriculture products, trade in services, and access to public contracts. Regulation and non-tariff barriers-including, for example, “cultural exceptions” favored by some European countries and American restrictions on European airlines may constitute substantial obstacles. More broadly, supporters of more global approaches to trade fear the impact of such an exclusive bilateral deal on the emerging and less developed markets. Our Conversation on Europe will cover these and other related issues, with participants from several venues and input from university and community people.

Ambassador (ret.) J.D. Bindenagel is a special Advisor to the President at DePaul University in Chicago.
Martin Staniland is a Professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh.
David Cleeton is a Professor of Economics at Illinois State University.
Zaki Laïdi is a Professor and the Director of Research at Sciences Po in Paris, France.
Ben Beachy is Research Director with Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch.

This presentation is offered as an introduction to Courtney Long’s dissertation, “Re-Categorizing Great Britain's Medieval Architecture: A Lesson in Nineteenth-Century Visual Taxonomy.” Courtney’s project seeks to investigate the ways in which architectural historians and natural scientists conveyed the process of change over time in textual and graphic observations published between 1800 and 1850. In her talk, Courtney will focus on the numerous attempts made by nineteenth-century British architects, historians, and theorists to systematically describe and illustrate the history of medieval ecclesiastical architecture in Great Britain. Examining pictures and diagrams found in a select work of published books by Thomas Rickman, John Britton, Edmund Sharpe, and John Ruskin, this presentation seeks to analyze the nineteenth-century attempts to codify British Architectural History and to structure knowledge graphically.

French Immersion Workshop for primary and secondary school teachers.

Abstract

We use the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 to show that personal relationships which
individuals maintain for non-economic reasons can be an important determinant of regional
economic growth. We show that West German households who have social ties to East
Germany in 1989 experience a persistent rise in their personal incomes after the fall of
the Berlin Wall. Moreover, the presence of these households significantly affects economic
performance at the regional level: it increases the returns to entrepreneurial activity, the
share of households who become entrepreneurs, and the likelihood that firms based within
a given West German region invest in East Germany. As a result, West German regions
which (for idiosyncratic reasons) have a high concentration of households with social ties
to the East exhibit substantially higher growth in income per capita in the early 1990s. A
one standard deviation rise in the share of households with social ties to East Germany in
1989 is associated with a 4.7 percentage point rise in income per capita over six years. We
interpret our findings as evidence of a causal link between social ties and regional economic
development.

Our work on this topic seeks to bridge the divide between medieval and early modern studies by taking a long view of three questions surrounding particular uses of vernacular languages and broader processes of vernacularization in this period: How did changes in technologies of communication, such as the rise of letterpress printing, intersect with the uses of vernacular languages? How were the structures of "vernacular theology" transfigured during the period leading up to and following the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation? And how does a focus on vernacularization help us to reevaluate theories and practices of translation-whether from one language to another, from one medium to another, or from one cultural sphere to another?

John King is Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at the Ohio State University. He is the author of numerous books, including the following:
English Reformation Literature: The Tudor Origins of the Protestant Tradition; Tudor Royal Iconography: Literature and Art in an Age of Religious Crisis; Spenser's Poetry and the Reformation Tradition; Milton and Religious Controversy: Satire and Polemic in Paradise Lost; Foxe's Book of Martyr's and Early Modern Print Culture. He is the recipient of fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, among many others.

This event is part of a yearlong series, “Speaking in Tongues,” organized by the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh and supported by a collaborative research grant from the University of Pittsburgh’s Humanities Center.

Our work on this topic seeks to bridge the divide between medieval and early modern studies by taking a long view of three questions surrounding particular uses of vernacular languages and broader processes of vernacularization in this period: How did changes in technologies of communication, such as the rise of letterpress printing, intersect with the uses of vernacular languages? How were the structures of "vernacular theology" transfigured during the period leading up to and following the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation? And how does a focus on vernacularization help us to reevaluate theories and practices of translation-whether from one language to another, from one medium to another, or from one cultural sphere to another?

John King is Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at the Ohio State University. He is the author of numerous books, including the following:
English Reformation Literature: The Tudor Origins of the Protestant Tradition; Tudor Royal Iconography: Literature and Art in an Age of Religious Crisis; Spenser's Poetry and the Reformation Tradition; Milton and Religious Controversy: Satire and Polemic in Paradise Lost; Foxe's Book of Martyr's and Early Modern Print Culture. He is the recipient of fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, among many others.

This event is part of a yearlong series, “Speaking in Tongues,” organized by the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh and supported by a collaborative research grant from the University of Pittsburgh’s Humanities Center.

Hear about opportunities to teach English or conduct research abroad through the Fulbright U.S. Student Program. Fulbright alumni and current Fulbright participants will join representatives from the university’s National Scholarships advising office to provide information on the Fulbright experience and how to best prepare for it.

From the heads and tails of individual notes to the foreheads and feet of song stanzas, medieval musical writings are replete with body parts. Sometimes the terms are used by convention, or in the service of simple mnemonics. But in other cases, the reasons for acts of musical anthropomorphization are less clear. Tracing the rhetoric of musical animation from the treatises into the realm of musica practica can give us fresh insight into some of the best-known songs of the later middle ages. Beyond this, the rhetoric of songs alive offers a useful alternative to the “work concept”—a musical ontology whose applicability before the Renaissance has been repeatedly called into question. The “creature concept” of song can serve as a powerful (if whimsical) tool for describing and analyzing musical things that are perishable but autonomous, subject to change and growth, and capable of doing work in the world.

Anna Zayaruznaya, an Assistant Professor of Music at Princeton University, is interested in the relationship between music and its texts in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Her research brings the history of musical form and notation into dialogue with medieval literary theory, the history of ideas, and iconographic and codicological trends. Recent papers and publications have focused on the motets of Guillaume de Machaut and Philippe de Vitry, Milanese chant, Isorhythm, and musical resonances in the poetry of John Gower and Jean Molinet. Currently she is working on a book that explores the roles played by the monstrous and hybrid in fourteenth-century musical aesthetics.

"Whoever controls the media, controls the mind." - Jim Morrison

The Carnegie Mellon International Film Festival, sponsored by the Humanities Center, is proud to present its 2013 theme, Faces of Media. From March 21st - April 13th, audiences will have the opportunity to enjoy Pittsburgh premiere screenings of over a dozen brand new and award-winning films from Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, France, Denmark, Norway, Romania, Austria, Finland, Spain, Poland, the Ukraine, the Congo, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Japan, China, Australia, Canada, and the United States. All films are presented in English or with English subtitles.

From the young protestors in Egypt who utilized social media apps like Facebook to mobilize a revolution to an American community in the near future that maintains social contact through constant live video feeds on individual home computers, the compelling real-life and fictional faces introduced by these films will provoke thoughtful questions about how our global media impacts society and vice versa. Contemporary issues concerning the societal effects of rapid globalized media development, such as violence, (in)justice, identity transformation, voyeurism, obsession, networking, and alienation, will be highlighted in the films through the unique constructs of language, imagery, and narrative.

We are thrilled to introduce you to powerful films from around the globe that we believe are extraordinarily unique and relevant to our time. Even in the digital age where we can access almost anything with the click of a mouse, these rare new releases are not yet available to stream online. Beyond the screenings themselves, audiences may continue to explore the complex and multifarious themes of these films at our events by participating in Q&A sessions with international directors, viewing interactive performances by student artists, and tasting delicious global cuisine from local eateries.

Whether you are fluent in all things related to new media or prefer to observe the constantly changing technology trends from a distance, the 2013 Carnegie Mellon International Film Festival: Faces of Media will provide you with the perfect chance to learn more about our evolving world of globalized communication through a cinematic lens. We look forward to seeing your faces in the audience!