The Muslims in the Global Context series offers the opportunity to examine the factors and trends that are having major impacts on these diverse regions and their relationships with other world regions and countries. The mini-courses consist of presentations on topics of critical importance to the understanding of Muslims in diverse regions of the world. In addition to attendance at all lectures, students enrolled for credit are required to develop and write a research paper on one of the themes of the mini-course and answer reflection prompts during the course. One- credit/ 3 units for CMU students is provided for the completion of each mini-course.

This one credit mini-course is part of a series organized by regions around the world based on their role on the world stage, their importance within the Muslim world, and the critical influence they play in the global community. The series and course seeks to illuminate the various perspectives of the Muslim community around the world. Drawing upon the expertise and research of participating faculty from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh and our partners at institutions around the world, the mini course series seeks to have students gain understanding of the religious, cultural, economical and political influences of Muslims in a global context.

5pm Friday March 20, 2015 to 1pm Sunday, March 22, 2015 (Carnegie Mellon, Hamburg Hall 1000)

All course information, including the speakers, schedule, and readings, may be found on the Global Studies website: http://www.ucis.pitt.edu/global/mini-course/europe

DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICS SPONSORS MOVIE NIGHT
"A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM"

SOMETHING APPEALING, SOMETHING APPALLING, SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE...A COMEDY TONIGHT!!

When a wily, witty, lying, lazy cheating slave discovers that his master's son is in love with the girl next door - a virgin courtesan - he promises to help win her heart in exchange for his freedom. But the road to romance is blocked with amazing surprises, cunning sidguises - and an awesome chariot race!

THURSDAY, MARCH 19, 2015
6:00 p.m.
CATHEDRAL OF LEARNING G13

The purpose of this conference is to exchange information on the public policies aimed at managing risks in the shale sector in the US and in other countries that are exploring shale development, including the UK, China, South Africa, Argentina and Poland. Presenters from France and Germany will also discuss the decisions of those countries to limit shale development and the consequences and opportunity costs of those decisions. Discussion among presenters and the audience will focus on the current evidence on risks and the effectiveness of mitigation strategies. We will also discuss the need to fill informational gaps in order to understand the risks and to innovate risk management strategies in the shale industry. Conference registration as well as a conference schedule can be found online: http://shanti1.weebly.com/conference-2015.html

The UCIS-Nine University and College International Studies Consortium of Georgia Joint Faculty Development Workshop on “Mobilizing People, Students, and Ideas: Social Movements across the Globe and in the Undergraduate Curriculum” was held on March 6, 2015. The organizer of the program was the Director of the Consortium, Dr. Raj (Rajgopal) Sashti, of Middle Georgia State College. It was held on the campus of Clayton State University in Morrow, GA (metro Atlanta area) as part of an on-going collaboration.

How to Apply to USAJobs

Thursday, March 5th at noon in Posvar 4217

The US government provides some amazing job opportunities. But how can you make your application get noticed in such a competitive and daunting system? Two members of the HEPC (Federal Hispanic Employment Program Committee) will give a presentation to help students to better navigate the USAJobs website and application system and give tips on how to submit a more competitive application.

The European Union’s Emissions Trading System (EU-ETS) is the engine of the global carbon market, accounting for more than 80% of the global market value of emissions trading permits. Additionally, a number of other States and sub-national actors have either linked their emissions trading systems to the EU-ETS, or contemplate doing so in the future. Given the size of the EU-ETS, these countries are thus largely tying the viability of their emissions trading schemes to the health of the EU-ETS. The lessons learned are highly pertinent for other emerging national and regional emissions trading schemes, or may even serve as a “template” for a future global carbon market. Professor Burns will briefly outline the genesis and evolution of the EU-ETS, as well as the major problems that currently afflict it and their implications for long-term climate policymaking in the European Union. In conclusion, he will offer a series of suggestions on how to reform the EU-ETS to ensure that it meets its overarching objectives of driving fuel-switching and technological innovation.

Manuel Gonzalez de Molina Calderon
My Travels/Mis Viajes

Drawings and Watercolors by a 12-year old talent from Seville, Spain

March 3-30, 2015
Make Your Mark Artspace and Coffeehouse
6736 Reynolds Street, Point Breeze/Pittsburgh
(412) 365-2117

As more faculty and students become involved in international research, the need for understanding and complying with regulatory and legal issues increases. This program will provide specific information for faculty and students who are planning to conduct international research now or in the future with university or external grant support. It is also highly recommended that faculty mentors who will be advising students going abroad attend this session. Topics that will be discussed include requirements related to the IRB as well as legal/financial matters. All are welcome to attend and no registration is required.

‘Knowledge is of Universals’ – How to Understand Aristotle’s Claim without Problems

Pieter Sjoerd Hasper
Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Indiana University at Bloomington

After canvassing the contexts in which Aristotle makes the claim that ‘Knowledge is of Universals’ (primarily in his account of experience (empeiria) and in his anti-Platonic discussions of the ontological status of universals, but also elsewhere) and the problematic aspects of this claim, I will propose an interpretation of it which does not get Aristotle into trouble. My interpretation comes in three stages. First I show briefly how knowledge of universals, by consisting in scientific explanatory demonstrations, does not comprise mere knowledge of universal facts and the possession of universal concepts. Then I show more extensively that Aristotle presupposes that scientific explanatory demonstrations have a certain logical form, namely the one common in Greek mathematics, where a theorem is proved in the case of an arbitrary individual. Aristotle uses arguments of this form in his logic, he accuses Platonists of having a false interpretation of them, and presupposes this logical form in his argument from Universal Mathematics against the existence of Platonic Forms (Metaphysics M.2). Finally, I show how with this interpretation in hand we can make sense of Aristotle’s claim to have solved, in Metaphysics M.10, ‘the greatest difficulty’ with the claim that knowledge is of universals without committing himself to the existence of Platonic Forms.

Friday, February 20, 2015
4:00 p.m.
244B Cathedral of Learning

Reception following lecture in in the Crogan-Schenley Room, 156 Cathedral of Learning

2015 marks the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. Join the JASP for an evening of reflection on the Japanese-German alliance. Dr. Ricky Law, Assistant Professor of History at Carnegie Mellon University, will speak.

His lecture will provide an overview of the origins, formation, development, and fall of the Axis alliance between Japan and Germany before and during World War II. It will discuss major events such as the Anti-Comintern Pact of 1936, the Tripartite Pact of 1940, and the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Join the JASP for this free evening at the Pittsburgh Athletic Association from 6:00 - 8:00 p.m., February 19, 2014. Light hors d’oeuvres and beverages will be provided. Space is limited so please register by February 13 at http://www.us-japan.org/jasp/events.html.

In recent months the Chinese have greatly increased their visibility and economic involvement in Europe. China is now the EU’s second leading trading partner and the EU is China’s first. EU leaders are increasingly attentive to Chinese views on a number of issues, including a range of economic and strategic topics. Panelists on this Conversation will explore both the current state of EU-China relations, the implications for Transatlantic ties and future directions of this dynamic relationship.

The panel will include: Gemma Marolda, Lecturer in the Department of Political Science and the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at Pitt (and an affiliated faculty member of our Center); Isabel Hilton, Editor at chinadialogue.net and former journalist for The Sunday Times, The Independent, The Guardian, and the New Yorker; David Scott, former Lecturer at Brunel University London and a frequent speaker at EU Parliament on the EU-China relationship, and at the NATO Defence College in Rome on Indian foreign policy and on Asia-Pacific international relations; and Jing Men, an InBev-Baillet Latour Professor of European Union-China Relations and InBev-Baillet Latour Chair of European Union-China Relations at the College of Europe, Brugges.

Panelists will be linked to audiences at Pitt and elsewhere and faculty and class participation is welcome.

Conversations on Europe is a monthly series of "virtual roundtables" featuring experts from Europe and North America commenting on current events impacting the U.S. and Europe. Individuals and audiences participate in person and via live remote connection. If you are interested in connecting, contact Kate Bowersox (kal68@pitt.edu) or Allyson Delnore (adelnore@pitt.edu).

The visible increase in religious practice among young European-born Muslims has provoked public anxiety. New government regulations seek not only to restrict Islamic practices within the public sphere, but also to shape Muslims’, and especially women’s, personal conduct. This presentation, based on Dr. Jouili’s forthcoming book, Pious Practice and Secular Constraints (Stanford, 2015), chronicles the everyday ethical struggles of women active in orthodox and socially conservative Islamic revival circles as they are torn between their quest for pious lifestyle and their aspirations to counter negative representations of Muslims within the mainstream society.

In 2013, governments across the European Union (EU) gave the European Commission a mandate to negotiate the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the United States. Since July 2013, the two sides have held seven rounds of negotiations, but they have not yet reached an agreement. A motivating factor of TTIP is “regulatory convergence”, bringing American and European standards closer together to facilitate trade. One potential obstacle is the subject of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the context of food safety regulation. Approximately 70 percent of all processed food in American supermarkets contain GM ingredients, in contrast to the EU where GM food is severely restricted. This talk will review the regulatory differences between the two sides and how different approaches to GMO risk assessment create an obstacle to a TTIP agreement.

In light of Greece’s parliament elections on January 25th, Political Science Professor, Dr. Despina Alexiadou, will introduce the actors and issues involved, and will weigh in on what the results of the victory of the leftist Syriza party mean for Greece, for other possible austerity programs, and for Europe’s changing landscape.

In our first Conversation on Europe for 2015, panelists will consider the demands on and capabilities of the European Union as a major global actor. Panelists will use a Carnegie Europe “Memo to the European Union Foreign Policy Chief” as a starting point. The panel will include: Sir Michael Leigh of the German Marshall Fund (and former European Commission Director General for Enlargement); Stefan Lehne, Carnegie Europe (and former Director General for political affairs at the Austrian Ministry for European and International Affairs); Ulrich Speck, Carnegie Europe (and Editor of the weekly Global Europe Brief newsletter); Nathalie Tocci, Deputy Director of the Instituto Affari Internazionali (and advisor to EU Foreign Policy Chief, Frederica Mogherini); and Kostas Kourtikakis, who earned his Ph.D. at Pitt and is affiliated with the University of Illinois’s European Union Center.
Panelists will be linked to audiences at Pitt and elsewhere and faculty and class participation is welcome.

Mark De Vos holds a Licentiate and Doctorate in Law (Universiteit Gent), a Master in Social Law (Université Libre de Bruxelles), and a Master of Laws (Harvard University). He teaches employment and labor law, EU-law, and the rule of law at Ghent University and the University of Brussels. He is the director of the Itinera Institute, an independent policy think-tank based in Brussels. He frequently publishes, lectures, and debates on issues of labor and employment law, European integration, globalization, labor market reform, pensions, ageing, healthcare, and welfare state, both nationally and internationally, and both academic, professional and policy circles, as well as in the media.

Professor Spoon’s presentation is based on work (with Heike Klüver) on how voter polarization affects party responsiveness. The authors analyze party responsiveness across nine West European countries and argue that party responsiveness increases with the polarization of issues among voters. Professor Spoon is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at North Texas and a candidate for the position in European politics in the Department of Political Science.

This paper is based on Professor Slapins’ forthcoming Cambridge University Press book (with Sven-Oliver Proksch) of the same title. Professor Slapin is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Houston and a candidate for the position in European politics in the Department of Political Science.

On November 16, 2014 the second round in the Romanian presidential elections ended with the upset victory of an ethnic German candidate from the provinces. These surprising results defied nationalist mobilization and the current government’s administrative control of the electoral process. In spite of pollsters’ and analysts’ predictions, Klaus Iohannis, the candidate with fewer votes in the first round came from behind and succeeded in taking the presidency over the leading candidate, the sitting Social Democratic Prime Minister, Victor Ponta. A new electoral pattern emerged around two related phenomena: the Romanian diaspora mobilized and transformed an ordinary election into a transnational event, while new media and online social networks played an important role in mobilizing these voters.

Marius Lazăr is Fulbright Visiting Scholar at CREES and Associate Professor of Sociology at „Babes-Bolyai” University of Cluj, Romania. He is a cultural sociologist and author of Paradoxes of Modernity: Elements for a sociology of cultural elites (Paradoxuri ale modernizării. Elemente pentru o sociologie a elitelor culturale, 2002). His current research is in the sociology of literature and of ethnic relations.

A part of the 25 Years – Fall of the Berlin Wall Series, this exhibit is free and open to the public. It was curated by the Special Collections Department, with grateful assistance from the Archives Service Center, the Digital Research Library, Web Services, and the Hillman Library Journal and General Map collections.

Come and enjoy selections from the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival. This event will feature the best selections from the 2014 German Program as well as the 2014 Music Video Program

Interested in global issues? Join us for an Alumni & Professionals Panel on Careers in International Law. Discover career opportunities for all fields of study and network with alumni and professionals working globally. Our diverse panel will discuss a variety of career options and share insights about how to make yourself more competitive in the job market.

The number of refugees entering the EU and Turkey has risen dramatically as a result of conflicts and crises in North Africa and the Middle East. The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHRC) reported that European countries recorded 264,000 asylum applications during the first six months of 2014, an increase of 24 per cent from the same period the year before. The largest increase – 73 per cent – in asylum seekers was reported by countries in Southern Europe, in particular Italy and Turkey. Refugees originated primarily from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Eritrea, and Serbia/Kosovo and North Africa. With conflict and destabilization in these regions continuing, European policy makers seek solutions that respond to both humanitarian concerns and an increasingly radicalized voting public. Join us for the next session of Conversations on Europe for a discussion of EU and Turkish responses to this growing crisis. Audience participation is welcome. For more information, please visit our webpage on our Conversations on Europe.

Over the course of the week, Pitt campus will be alive with international activities, global events and the buzz of the International Week Contest, which will grant 1 free Summer 2015 Study Abroad Panther Program (tuition scholarship) to a country of your choice, a Sony NEX-F3 camera, or an apple ipad. For a full list of events, please review the International Week Website to learn more about how to add an international focus to your academic experience.

Free and open to the public, the Society for Ethnomusicology is offering a free workshop to those interested in learning the basics of Irish dance. Registration is not necessary for this portion of the conference's program.

Welcome and Brief Introduction: Meng Ren, PhD Candidate, Department of Music

Dance Menu:
Two Hand Reel
Walls of Limerick
Waves of Tory
Gay Gordon

Dance Performance by Children of the Shovlin Academy of Irish Dance

Haymaker's Jig
Two Hand Honpipe
Rakes of mallow
Keel Row

Musicians: Vince Burns (fiddle), Richard Withers (Flute and accordion), Bruce Molyneaux (Tenor banjo and mandolin), caller (Liz Shovlin Grinko)

Model United Nations provides students the opportunity to learn about and discuss today's most relevant issues of international diplomacy through participation in an academic simulation.

Polishfest is an annual event featuring Polish folk music and dance, food, and arts and crafts. Funds raised help to support the Polish Nationality Room Scholarship fund.

*Director Andreas Voigt will attend the screenings of his films November 7-8. A discussion with the director will directly follow the screening. Popcorn and drinks provided.

Voigt’s next film follows a journalist, a worker, a left-wing skinhead, a teenager, and a pub owner between December 1989 and 1990, the last year of the GDR and the first one in a reunified Germany. The film centers not on political opinions, but on actual situations, developments, and personal feelings. Of course, at the beginning fo the shoot, reunification could not have been predicted, so the film is an important document about the time of change, the social and economic insecurity, but it also has some ironic and even absurd moments and uses the metaphor of the last dance (from the Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film, 2013).

http://www.andreas-voigtfilm.de/?testvariable=englisch&testvariable2=lei...

Considered to be the most comprehensive documentation of events surrounding the 1989 Monday demonstrations in Leipzig, this film highlights the centerpiece of the citizens' movement that led to the fall of the Wall. As the only professional team able to film in Leipzig at the time, demonstrators were interviewed, as well as members of the citizens’ rights movement, officials and bystanders in East Germany’s peaceful revolution. Film Director Andreas Voigt will attend the screenings of his films November 7-8. A discussion with the director will directly follow the screening.

Widely published in the languages, literatures, and cultures of the ancient world, Dr. Katz is interested above all in the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European and in etymology, which he views as part of the history of ideas.
Among the organizations from which he has received awards and fellowships are the American Council of Learned Societies, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Study, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Science Foundation; he is especially pleased to have won, at Princeton, both the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching and the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award.

Dr. Avram-Willis is a survivor of the Holocaust in Greece.
A light reception and mini-exhibit will follow the lecture.

On October 28, 1940, the cry “OHI” (No!) resounded across all of Greece as the beginning of the Greek people’s bold resistance to the Axis ultimatum to join or be destroyed. The ensuing Nazi occupation of Greece between 1941-1944 ravaged the country and disemboweled entire villages and towns. Even though most of Greece’s Jews were murdered in the Nazi “Final Solution”, Hitler’s savagery was dealt a humiliation as Greek Christians hid, transferred, and otherwise protected as many Greek Jews as possible. From the National Resistance to Archbishop Damaskinos, regional bishops, clergy, civic leaders, and simple families, nowhere else in Nazi-occupied Southern Europe was there so much effort in protecting and saving Jews from the inhumanity of the Nazi regime and its philosophy.

On October 28th, 2014, the Greek-American and Jewish Communities of Western Pennsylvania will come together to remember and to offer a tribute to the Righteous of Greece. The story of Greek Christians protecting and saving Greek Jews remains a largely unexplored aspect of the period’s history and stands in sharp contrast to the darkness of that epoch. It is a story of morality, love, respect, sacrifice, and ultimately an expression of the humanity that binds people together.

For more information, contact info@pahellenicfoundation.org.

Is Germany the new California? Is Texas the new Denmark? Historically, the political leadership on sustainable development has shifted back and forth between the U.S. and Europe. Nowhere is this as evident as in the promotion of renewable energy. Where do we stand now? Dr. Aklin will explore the sources of renewable energy policies both across continents and vertically within the European Union and the U.S.

The centenary anniversary of the Great War has invited numerous commentators to make comparisons between the events leading up to the outbreak of war in 1914 and the current Ukrainian Crisis. This session of the EUCE’s virtual roundtable series asks experts to comment on these comparisons. Can we learn anything about effective conflict prevention from that earlier period? Or are such comparisons too facile, and deceptive? Public participation is welcome.

Panelists will include:
Mark Steinberg, Historian of 19th century Russia at the University of Illinois and co-editor of a new book series at Yale University Press, "Eurasia Past and Present"
Carol Saivetz, Research associate at Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and a research affiliate at the Security Studies Program at MIT
Gregor Thum, Historian of Central and Eastern Europe at the University of Pittsburgh and author of "Uprooted: How Breslau Became Wrocław during the Century of Expulsions"
Frank Furedi, Sociologist and author of "First World War: Still No End in Sight"
Andrew Konitzer, Acting Director at the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh

October 16th
Director: Christian Petzold, 2013
Popcorn and drinks provided

Winner of the Best Director prize at this year's Berlin Film Festival, the latest film from Christian Petzold (Yella, Jerichow) is a simmering, impeccably crafted Cold War thriller, starring the gifted Nina Hoss-in her fifth lead role for the director-as a Berlin doctor banished to a rural East German hospital as punishment for applying for an exit visa. As her lover from the West carefully plots her escape, Barbara waits patiently and avoids friendships with her colleagues-except for Andre (Ronald Zehrfeld) the hospital's head physician, who is warmly attentive to her. But even as she finds herself falling for him, Barbara still cannot be sure that Andre is not a spy. As her defensive wall slowly starts to crumble, she is eventually forced to make a profound decision about her future. A film of glancing moments and dangerous secrets, BARBARA paints a haunting picture of a woman being slowly crushed between the irreconcilable needs of desire and survival. Germany's official Oscar submission for Best Foreign Language Film.

In this first 2014 installment of our Pizza and Politics Graduate Lecture Series, GSPIA's EU and the World Organization 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 & Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. Also learn about getting involved in the EU and the World Organization and about other opportunities for EU Studies at Pitt! PIZZA WILL BE SERVED!

For centuries the area of today’s Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania has been shaped by different national and ethnic groups. This symposium will examine the (re)imagining and (re)interpreting of spaces, symbols and sites in the of Baltic region from the 19th to the 21st century. Presenters will address historical difficulties with “mapping” this multi-ethnic region as well as current issues connected with the region’s recent history after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Thursday, October 9, 2014 (Alcoa Room, Pitt School of Law, 2nd floor)
Introduction: Ron Linden (EUCE/ESC of the University of Pittsburgh)
Keynote 5.30pm Jeffrey Sommers (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee): Baltic Tiger or Paper Tiger? Unraveling of Europe’s Social Model in Latvia

Friday, October 10, 2014 (Humanities Center, 602 Cathedral of Learning)
Panel 1, 8.45–10.15am
Between the Russian and the German Empire: National Borders and Imaginations
Gregor Thum (University of Pittsburgh): German Culture and Russian Citizenship in Russia’s Baltic Provinces
Jörg Hackmann (University of Szczecin): Mapping the Baltic Region, 1850-1940

Panel 2, 10.30am–12.00pm
The Baltic Region after World War I: the Impact of Nationalism(s)
Adam Brode (University of Pittsburgh): Pride of Place: Symbolic Capital in Riga’s Churches
Andrejs Plakans (Iowa State University): Nationalizing Public Spaces: The WWI Latvian Riflemen in Latvian Memory

Jean-Monnet Symposium
1989 and Beyond: Contested Sites of Memory in Post-Communist Space
Panel 3, 3.00–4.30pm
Daina Stukuls Eglitis (George Washington University): The Baltic Way 1989–2014: Revolution, Remembrance, and Regret in Post-Communist Latvia
Jennie Schulze (Duquesne University): Estonia’s Bronze Soldier Crisis: Kin-state Activism and Minority Policies

Panel 4, 4.45–6.15pm
Neringa Klumbyte (Miami University): Affective Histories in Post-Soviet Lithuania
Katja Wezel (University of Pittsburgh): Riga’s “Corner House” – From a Soviet Place of Terror to a Latvian Site of Remembrance?

The symposium is free and open to the public.

Croatia’s official government policy towards enlargement into the Western Balkans is shaped by a number of different, sometimes complimentary, sometimes conflicting factors. When it joined the EU as the Union’s 28th member in July 1, 2013, this country of 4.3 million inhabitants ranked 21st in terms of both population size and GDP making it one of the smallest countries in the organization. In foreign policy terms, such small states face the task of either quietly tending to their affairs, oftentimes under the wing of some larger power, or of attempting to capitalize on certain key issues of specific characteristics which would allow them to occupy a niche in the international system. The current Croatian government has opted for the latter strategy, attempting to capitalize on the country’s shared historical, political and cultural legacies with other non-member states in the region to position Croatia as a champion for enlargement. At the same time, Croatia’s legacies with neighboring states and its historical drive to leave the Balkans complicates its role as an advocate for EU expansion into the region. These competing legacies interact with domestic political cleavages in ways that create different pressures on political actors representing various political options. While this project focuses primarily on Croatian foreign policy, it contains many important lessons for other small current and future EU member states.