Join us for a screening of Sweet Dreams at Harris Theater, a darkly comedic and surreal exploration of colonial legacy in Indonesia. As the plantation owner’s death uncovers familial strife and colonial absurdities, the film delves into the complex relationships and power struggles within a sugar plantation. With its blend of malevolence and absurdity, Sweet Dreams critically examines how colonialism permeates and distorts every facet of life.

This film is part of the SCREENSHOT: Asia Film Festival, which takes place September 25-29. All films are free for Pitt students, staff, and faculty with a valid Pitt ID. Registration in advance is requested but not required. For the full schedule of films, please visit screenshot.pitt.edu.

*Please Note: Pitt ID holders can reserve tickets by clicking “Promo Code” in the upper right corner of the Harris Theater website and using SCREENSHOT24 as the code. IDs will be checked on entry.

CONTENT WARNING: Sexual content, Sexual violence, Disturbing imagery

Gaming all night is fun but what about the energy consumption? How is the German gaming industry responding to climate change both in game design and beyond?

Light Refreshments will be served

The history of the Soviet economy is of central importance to how scholars and activists understand the fate of state socialism in the twentieth century and how scholars and diplomats understand contemporary security concerns in Eurasia and in Europe. For the former, state socialism's failure to fulfill its liberatory promises casts doubt on any project that aims to free humanity from the burden of commodified labor and the class relations to which it gives rise. Dr. Nealy demonstrates the Soviet economy's capacity to evolve in a way that bears striking resemblance to the sorts of changes experienced by much of the industrialized world during the same period. The result is a compelling interpretation of the history of the Soviet economy that offers new answers, but also provokes new questions, about the nature of state socialism in history and the prospects for state security in the contemporary world.

About the speaker:
James Nealy received his PhD from Duke University in May of 2022. A specialist in the social, economic, and intellectual history of the Soviet Union and the world.

Attention: Undergraduate students! Are you looking to gain experience that will help prepare you for a globally-connected job market? Stop by Drop-In Hours to learn more about getting the Global Distinction added to your academic transcript, receiving special recognition at graduation, and standing out to prospective employers!

The Office of National Scholarships will be holding an information session
where we will discuss scholarships that pay for study abroad and language
study. Please join us to learn more about how to go overseas on a
scholarship!

Scholarships Covered:
- Boren Scholarship and Fellowship
- Critical Language Scholarship
- Gilman Scholarship
- Frederick Honors College Scholarships
- Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships

Join us as we revisit the top Eurovision contestants of the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest.
We will review the top 10 songs/videos from across Europe, and you will have the chance to cast your vote.

The event will be hosted by Miss Georgia Bea Cummings, the 2024 Gay East Coast Beauty Icon.

*** Refreshments will be provided.

The annual Brussels-Lux Study Tour is a week-long opportunity for educators across the U.S. to learn more about the European Union. With funding from the EU Delegation and the U.S. Department of Education, K-12 educators and faculty teaching at community colleges and minority-serving institutions (Title III- or Title V-eligible) are able to gain first-hand knowledge and experiences to further their understanding of Europe and the European Union. Visits to EU institutions and other organizations provide an inside look at the issues facing Europe and the EU. Educators also participate in a day-trip to Luxembourg to visit the European Court of Justice.

Dr. Urbansky discusses the challenges faced by Chinese immigrants during the late Tsarist Empire and early Soviet Union, highlighting the racial and cultural prejudices that fueled hostilities in urban settings. His analysis explores how these early interactions shaped the experiences and perceptions of Chinese communities in a rapidly changing socio-political landscape.

Come meet international students, make friends, practice conversational English, and have fun together, during these weekly discussion groups coordinated by the English Language Institute. Feel free to bring your lunch :)

Are you looking to gain experience that will help prepare you for a
globally-connected job market? Stop by Drop-In Hours to learn more
about getting the Global Distinction added to your academic transcript,
receiving special recognition at graduation, and standing out to
prospective employers!

Come meet international students, make friends, practice conversational English, and have fun together, during these weekly discussion groups coordinated by the English Language Institute. Feel free to bring your lunch :)

As humans rely more and more on electronic devices to support their everyday activities, there are ever present warnings about the impacts such reliance has on human autonomy ranging from who owns and controls information networks, the inequitable impact of technology consumption on peoples and places, varying accessibility of technology around the globe, and the promises and limitations of technology in improving human health.



In Spring 2024, the focus will be on the impact technology has on criminal justice. This will include a discussion about technology’s impact on human safety, including the increasing use of machine learning, artificial intelligence, and other technology by various authorities of the criminal justice system. This will include discussions on the benefits and risks in the implementation and automation of such technology within criminal justice apparatuses. We will also consider how such implementation differs across global criminal justice systems, including how this technology is governed.

Based on Artem Chukh's autobiographical novel Who Are You?, this Ukrainian drama is an encounter in a provincial town between Tymofiy (a Ukrainian boy) and Felix, a charismatic veteran of the Afghan War, broken by PTSD. A difficult portrait of generational difficulties between children and adults in the Ukrainian 1990s, this film is a coming-of-age story about the first lessons of kindness and cruelty.
The screening will be followed by a talk with the film's director, Iryna Tsilyk. Tsilyk is a prominent Ukrainian director and poet whose awards include the Documentary Directing Award at Sundance (2020).

In occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Fosse Ardeatine massacre in Rome, oral historian Alessandro Portelli will lead a discussion of his book, The Order Has Been Carried Out (2003), a seminal work that challenged long held assumptions about the event.

On March 23, 1944, during the Nazi occupation of Rome, a partisan unit detonated a bomb in Via Rasella that killed thirty-three German police officials. In the span of a day, the Germans retaliated by killing 335 Italian civilians in an abandoned quarry outside of Rome known as the Fosse Ardeatine. Following the massacre, a false narrative emerged that the Germans had carried out the reprisal only after the partisans failed to turn themselves in. Portelli's book examines the struggle over the memory of this event, as well as key assumptions about Rome, the German occupation, and war using oral testimony from two hundred interviews.

We are using this conversation as an occasion not only to remember the events of Fosse Ardeatine but also to discuss the production of knowledge about traumatic events, as well as the meanings and ellipses present in collective memory. By conducting a critical inquiry into the narratives surrounding the massacre with Portelli, we will explore how to identify and challenge our assumptions and biases about histories we think we know well. We will investigate the role of dialogue in oral testimony--the foundational importance of the relationship between and interviewer and their subject--and how Portelli shaped The Order around this dialogue.

Moderated by Rachel Love, Department of French and Italian.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine transformed European security concerns dramatically. It has disrupted the lives of countless people in the region. It triggered a new wave of rapid forced migration throughout the EU and in other neighboring countries. Displacement from the war impacts not only Ukrainian women and children fleeing to Poland, Germany, Hungary, Moldova, and other neighboring countries. It has also affected Russians avoiding mobilization or Russian intellectuals avoiding repressions in their home country.

Unfortunately, at a time of record numbers of internal and external displaced persons worldwide, the number of people seeking asylum has now risen in Central Asia and Caucasus. In addition to considering the overall security situation resulting from the war, this Conversation on Europe will ask: How do these movements of people affect the current situation in the EU and in receiving countries? How have societies and state apparatuses reacted to this migration, and what can we learn from these dynamics? What role does “security” and securitization play in these processes?

Moderator:
Randall Halle, University of Pittsburgh

Panelist: TBD

Hrishabh Sandaliya, Co-Director of European Programme for Integration and Migration (EPIM)
In this session he will speak candidly, offering insight from his "lived experience as a migrant,
student, entrepreneur and civil society activist on the seeming impossibility of Europe today, and the hope -the relational and imagination infrastructures we need to ensure its continuity." Specifically, he hopes to relate "my time in and from Europe's different nooks and corners - borders (Cyprus and Armenia), Scandinavia, MittelEuropa and its capital, to the numerous challenges we face, and posit that perhaps we need a different way to make sense of our world and address these issues -beyond the binaries of black and white and left and right." Seats are limited to allow for good conversation.

About the Speaker:
Hrishabh Sandilya is Co-Director of EPIM, the European Programme for Integration and Migration and Co-lead at ReImagined Futures, a collective systems change consultancy. Sandilya works on narratives, systems, and imagination and relational infrastructures as Co-Director of EPIM, the European Programme for Integration and Migration and at ReImagined Futures, a collective systems change consultancy he co-leads. Between 2018 and 2022, Hrishabh setup and led Project Phoenix in Cyprus working on refugee inclusion and entrepreneurship, building on a decade-long body of work in the non-profit, academic, and entrepreneurial worlds across Czechia, Armenia, India, and Sweden. Hrishabh occasionally opines and comments and his work has been featured on Czech Television and in Project Syndicate and the Indian Express (amongst others). Hrishabh was raised in Bombay and then spent 12 years in Prague, building a parallel life within the city’s engrossing cultural scene - as a restaurateur, curating a gallery and a regular DJ gig at one of the city’s favorite clubs. After naturalizing as a Czech citizen, the rest of Europe beckoned, resulting in a meandering trail through Berlin, Yerevan, Sweden’s idyllic south coast, Nicosia and eventually Brussels, during which he complimented professional pursuits with time spent sailing and filmmaking, and back at university. Hrishabh was a 2023 Marshall Memorial Fellow.

Facilitated by Randall Halle, Director: European Studies Center, University of Pittsburgh

Global conflicts, climate change, and unequal development challenge both societal and personal resilience by causing displacement, restricting resources, and counteracting efforts for a renewable world. Whether in urban or rural areas, people across the world grapple with creating sustainable livelihoods, ecosystems, social infrastructures, and economies. If resilience can be defined as the competence to reduce precarity during a crisis and build a more thriving society after, how can we best encourage students to learn about and become agents for global resilience?
The 2024 Summer Institute offers a free, week-long professional development opportunity for K-12 educators, combining joint sessions with self-selected tracks that balance interactive activities with time for individual research while prioritizing support for the design of high-quality curricular materials. All sessions will be held virtually. Educators from Title I and Title III schools are particularly encouraged to apply.

The Romanian Room Committee invites you to celebrate Mărțișor. Mărțișor is an old Romanian tradition of giftinga red and white string attached to a small piece of jewelry or a flower. Learn the history of Mărțișor and join the members of the Romanian Room committee to make your own and for your friends. Learn more about this Romanian tradition which falls on March 1 of every year during which the gifting of a red and white string attached to a small piece of jewelry, or a flower is believed to bring health and luck to the wearer.
Come enjoy Romanian snacks!

Are you looking to gain experience that will help prepare you for a globally-connected job market? Stop by Drop-In Hours to learn more about getting the Global Distinction added to your academic transcript, receiving special recognition at graduation, and standing out to prospective employers!

Come meet international students, make friends, practice conversational English, and have fun together, during these weekly discussion groups coordinated by the English Language Institute. Feel free to bring your lunch :)

The Undergraduate Model European Union is an annual event that gives students a chance to learn about the workings of the European Union through preparation for and participation in a hands-on two-day simulation of a meeting of the European Council. Model EU enhances students’ understanding of the issues and challenges facing the 27 member nations of the EU. Awards will be given to the most effective delegations and best individual position papers.

Professor Abdou Seck is a decolonial scholar and activist from Senegal (West Africa). In this seminar, we will learn more about his work and what decolonial activism looks like from a West-African and Senegalese perspective! This chat will be facilitated by Dr. Pernille Røge and Dr. Oronde Sharif. Reception to follow!

More about the speaker:
Professor Abdou Seck founded and currently leads the Group for Action and Critical Study of Africa (GAEC – Africa), a decolonial group of activist scholars. Prof. Seck’s work centers on making theory accessible to people outside of academia and he engages with artists, musicians, indigenous communities, and boots-on-the-ground activists to bridge the gap between academia/theory to the populations living those lives that theory comes from. He brings critical knowledge of race and racial formation from a West African and Pan-Africanist perspective. This is all part of a larger conversation about the globalization of Africa and the Africanization of the globe – it is of critical importance to center African knowledge and uplift education about Africa in our communities and beyond.