Monday, April 1st, 2013
The Reformation of the Book: Vernacular and Vernacularization
Presenter: John King (Ohio State University)
Location: Cathedral of Learning, Room 602
Announced by:
on behalf of
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.
Thursday, March 28th, 2013
Le Mépris (Jean-Luc Godard 1963) and its story of cinema: a ‘fabric of quotations’
Presenter: Laura Mulvey (Uni of London)
Location: Cathedral of Learning, Room 324
Announced by:
on behalf of
Laura Mulvey is Professor of Film and Media Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London. She has written extensively on film and film theory. Her books include Fetishism and Curiosity (1996), Death Twenty-four Times a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image (2006), Experimental British Television (edited with Jamie Sexton, 2007), and Visual and Other Pleasures (2nd edition, 2009). She has co-directed films, including Riddles of the Sphinx (1978) and Frida Kahlo and Tina Malatti (1980), as well as the documentary Disgraced Monuments (1996).
*Reception to follow*
Passions and Portraits: Thoughts on Rembrandt, Van Dyck, and the History of Taste
Presenter: STEPHANIE DICKEY (Queen's University)
Location: Frick Fine Arts Building, Room 202
Announced by:
on behalf of
Among the Baroque paintings held in the Royal Collection in London are two works from the early modern Netherlands: the Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn's Portrait of the Shipbuilder Jan Rijcksen and his Wife Griet Jans, 1633, and the Flemish artist Anthony van Dyck's Cupid and Psyche, 1640. At first glance, these paintings could not look more different, yet they have more in common than at first appears. Close analysis reveals how these paintings encapsulate the competitive relationship between two gifted artists, the tensions between tradition and modernity that characterized their age, and the essential significance of emotion in the visual language of the Baroque.
*Dr. Stephanie S. Dickey is the Bader Chair in Northern Baroque Art at Queen's University
Supplementing Lenin: Toward a Communism of Other-determination
Presenter: Nergis Ertürk, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Penn State University
Location: 501 Cathedral of Learning
Nergis Ertürk is the author of Grammatology and Literary Modernity in Turkey (Oxford University Press, 2011), the recipient of the 2012 MLA Prize for a First Book. In 2008, she won the William Riley Parker Prize for her essay, "Modernity and Its Fallen Languages: Tanpınar's Hasret, Benjamin's Melancholy," which appeared in PMLA. Her article, “Phonocentrism and Literary Modernity in Turkey,” appeared in boundary 2, and her research has also appeared in a wide-ranging collection of prominent literary works.
For the Glory of Greece: Looking Forward by Looking Back
Presenter: Her Excellency Mrs. Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki
Mrs. Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki was elected Member of Parliament of the Greek Republic in 1989 and was re-elected the following year. In 1998, the Republic of Greece appointed her Ambassador-at-Large for her service leading Greece’s successful bid to host the 2004 Olympic Games. Two years later, she was asked to assume the presidency of the ATHENS 2004 Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games, which was at the time behind schedule and over-budget. Under her leadership, Athens gave the world what IOC President Jacques Rogge called: "an unforgettable, dream Games." Today, Ambassador Angelopoulos-Daskalaki is an active member of the Clinton Global Initiative and Vice-Chairman of the Dean's Council for Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Her book, My Greek Drama: Life, Love and One Woman's Olympic Effort to Bring Glory to her Country, will be published in May. A reception in honor of Her Excellency Ambassador Angelopoulos-Daskalaki will be held immediately following the talk. REFRESHMENTS WILL BE SERVED. PUBLIC IS WELCOME.
Cross-Border Networks as a Source of Regulatory Change in the EU's Eastern Neighborhood
Time: 12:00 pm to 1:30 pm
Presenter: Evgeny Postnikov
Location: 4217 Posvar Hall
Wednesday, March 27th, 2013
Making Prussia Polish. Changing Land and People in Poland’s New Territories, 1945–1960
Presenter: Katharina Matro, PhD Candidate, Stanford University
Location: 3702 Posvar Hall
Katharina Matro’s dissertation and talk focuses on the transformation of the vast estates of Prussia’s nobility into Polish state farms and smaller family farmsteads post-1945 and the defeat of Nazi Germany. Her research forms the argument that the continual assault on both land and property rights during the time determined the fragile postwar economy and society in the region.
Colloquium: Gervase, Edmer, and the Gestalt of Canterbury Cathedral
Presenter: Karen Webb (HAA)
Location: Room 203 Frick Fine Arts
Announced by:
on behalf of
Few architectural tracts remain from the medieval period in the west. Two tracts on architecture that this paper utilizes from this period—one by Gervase in 1185, and one by Edmer in 1116—both discuss subjects that collectively include the fire, building, and arrangement of different architectural campaigns at Canterbury Cathedral. Here, these texts are used to trace the written knowledge of the succession of churches—those of Lanfranc, Anselm, William of Sens, and William the Englishman, the last of whose termination of the cathedral remains intact today. Viewing these buildings as a united set of statements, this paper proposes that they interlink in purpose and in conception. While scholars like Richard Krautheimer and Günter Bandmann have suggested there is a possible link between architectural form and conceptual or philosophical meaning, there has been much doubt about this connection by scholars like Paul Crossley. In the course of this paper, the idea of an iconography of architecture and even an iconography of architectural tools are explored in a direct challenge to Crossley’s work by using Gervase and Edmer to establish a line of intention in planning and meaning. While Crossley states that “Even if style can . . . be derived from thought, the character of the gothic cathedral, the sources of its totality, cannot be traced back to some single ‘intention.’” This paper maintains that the complete set of buildings from at least that of Anselm (1090 – 1130) that come-and-go on the site of Canterbury Cathedral form a Gestalt, or a planned intentional set of parts that create a whole originary vision. This vision reproduces a set of parallel architectural types comparable to the styles of the visual figurative arts like idealism, naturalism, stylization, abstraction, and non-representation and paralleled in the text of Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies. In this presentation, the explication of idealism in architecture is the primary objective and its theological relationship to what this study relates to Christian representation and Jewish representation.
Tuesday, March 26th, 2013
International Toolkit Series: National Scholarships: Fulbright
Location: 4217 Posvar Hall
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.
Friday, March 22nd, 2013
Medieval Song from Head to Tail
Presenter: ANNA ZAYARUZNAYA (Princeton)
Location: Music Building Room 132
Announced by:
on behalf of
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.
Thursday, March 21st, 2013
Why Wagner?: Some Thoughts on the Occasion of his Bicentennial
Presenter: Nicholas Vazsonyi (South Carolina)
Location: Cathedral of Learning, Room 602
Announced by:
on behalf of
Nicholas Vazsonyi is Professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of South Carolina and the editor of the Cambridge Wagner Encyclopedia (forthcoming 2013), an international effort involving some 80 scholars from 11 academic disciplines and residing in 9 countries. He teaches and researches on German literature and culture, including music and film, covering the 18th through the 21st centuries. He has published monographs on Wagner and on Goethe, and edited volumes on Wagner’s Meistersinger and on German national identity from 1750 to 1871.
Comparing the European Parliament with the US Congress: Theoretical and Methodological Challenges
Time: 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm
Presenter: Selma Bendjaballah, Sciences Po
Location: 4217 Posvar Hall
Comparing Legislatures implies numerous challenges to capture the complexity of democratic logics playing in these institutions, especially when these legislative bodies are embedded in institutional settings and present features that are seen as unique or exceptional. This talk aims at presenting a specific reading of comparative legislative research on two exceptional Legislatures, namely the European Parliament and the US Congress. Dr. Bendjaballah will retrace what has been done in this field, the research questions that have been raised, and the epistemological and methodological challenges that have emerged as well.
Selma Bendjaballah is a research manager at the Centre for European Studies at Sciences Po in Paris, from where she also received her Ph.D. in Political Science. Dr. Bendjaballah specializes in comparative politics with an emphasis on legislatures (standing committees) and party systems of the European Union, individual countries within Europe, and the American Congress. She has published numerous articles in such journals as Politique européenne and a special issue, forthcoming, of the International Review of Comparative Politics. Her book, Introduction to Legislative Studies, co-authored with Olivier Rozenberg and Anne-Laure Beaussier, will appear in print this year.
Thursday, March 21st, 2013 to Saturday, April 13th, 2013
Carnegie Mellon University's International Film Festival 2013: Faces of Media
"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!
Wednesday, March 20th, 2013
Patterns of Vernacular Affectivity in Late Medieval and Protestant England
Presenter: Barbara Rosenwein (Loyola)
Location: Cathedral of Learning, Room 602
Announced by:
on behalf of
If the purpose of "Speaking in Tongues" is to bridge the divide between medieval and early modern studies, then one issue that must be faced is whether there was a great change in emotions or affectivity from one period to the other. Certainly the prevailing thesis, hanging on the coattails of Norbert Elias's Civilizing Process, is that there was a great change--and it can be summed up as the transition from medieval emotionality to modern restraint.
In this paper, I take issue with that thesis by looking specifically at one form of emotionality, "affective piety." I argue that affective piety, as exemplified by Margery Kempe, continued to some degree, at least among some groups, even in the Protestant world. My focus is on the testimonials of the members of a mid-17th century "gathered church""-that is, a Puritan church-near London. Both Margery and the Puritans wrote in the vernacular, though of course that vernacular changed over time. Thus my exploration is indeed about "speaking in tongues. " I shall conclude with the thought that there are more continuities between medieval and early modern religious emotions than most historians have admitted.
Barbara H. Rosenwein is Professor of History at Loyola University Chicago. She has been at the forefront of research on the history of emotions, editing Anger's Past: The Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages (Cornell, 1998), and authoring Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Cornell, 2006). This talk is from a current project on the history of emotions from late antiquity to about 1700.
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?
Silencing Machine: Peter Roehr’s Film Montages as Queer Disavowal
Presenter: Meredith North (HAA)
Location: Room 203 Frick Fine Arts
Announced by:
on behalf of
This paper analyzes the 1965 Film Montages of the West German artist Peter Roehr. Roehr’s untitled Film Montages of American and European commercial advertisements utilized an explicitly mechanical aesthetic to remove removed any personal identification, political impetus, or artistic qualities from the montages. Such an extreme disavowal of subjectivity through the cold objective logic of mechanical precision indicated that these montages could, and should, be understood in two other ways: as Roehr’s purposeful self-silencing, and as critiques of commodity fetishization. As my paper proposes, Roehr’s silencing machine aesthetic arises from a particularly queer perspective that gives access to alternative modes of social critique and political purpose.
Tuesday, March 19th, 2013
Northern Ireland's Lost Opportunity
Presenter: Tony Novosel (History)
Location: 3703 WWPH - History Lounge
*Part of the History Department's Book Symposia Series*
Featuring commentary by:
Billy Hutchinson (Progressive Unionist Party, Northern Ireland)
David Miller (CMU)
Peter Shirlow (Queen's University-Belfast)
Saturday, March 16th, 2013
Tuesday, March 12th, 2013
EuroChallenge
What is the Euro Challenge?
The Euro Challenge is an exciting educational opportunity for high school students to learn about the European Union (EU) and the euro. Student teams of three to five students are asked to make presentations answering specific questions about the European economy and the single currency, the euro. They are also asked to pick one member country of the “euro area” (the 17 EU member countries that have adopted the euro so far), to examine an economic problem at the country level, and to identify policies for responding to that problem.
In 2013, its eighth year, the Euro Challenge will continue to expand nationally, with more than 100 teams from various regions in the United States expected to compete for monetary awards generously provided by The Moody’s Foundation.
The Euro Challenge is a program launched by the Delegation of the European Union to the United States in partnership with The Moody’s Foundation and with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York serving as program advisor. The program is supported by Credit Suisse, the University of North Carolina, Florida International University, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Illinois, the University of Texas at Austin, Rutgers University, George Washington University, Indiana University, the University of Wisconsin, the World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh, the DC World Affairs Council, the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland (Pittsburgh Branch), the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and Detroit Branch.
Thursday, March 7th, 2013
Metamorphosis at the Mughal Court: The Case of the Diana Automaton
Presenter: Jessica Keating (Southern California)
Location: Room 202 Frick Fine Art
Announced by:
on behalf of
This paper considers how a seventeenth-century German Automaton featuring the Roman Goddess Diana atop a stag made its way to the court of the Mughal Emperor Jahangir (1569-1627), and it explores this object's social life outside of its putative home of the Holy Roman Empire.
Colloquium: Figuring out Europe: Nation, State and the European Union in the German Public Sphere
Time: 12:30 pm to 2:00 pm
Presenter: Russell Berman (Stanford)
Location: Cathedral of Learning, Room 602
With responses by Nancy Condee (Global Studies), Alberta Sbragia (Political Science) and Gregor Thum (History).
Russell Berman is Director of German Studies at Stanford, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Editor of TELOS,
and recent President of the Modern Language Association. He is an expert on German literature and culture and
on cultural relations between Europe and the United States, and is a pioneer in German Cultural Studies.
In more than 80 articles and five books, he has written widely on modern German and European literature and politics,
as well as on issues in contemporary cultural theory
Wednesday, March 6th, 2013
Graduate Seminar
Presenter: Russell Berman (Stanford)
Announced by:
on behalf of
Graduate Seminar building on Prof. Berman's talk "Figuring out Europe: Nation, State and the European Union in the German Public Sphere"
Tuesday, March 5th, 2013
Is the Ivory Tower an Iron Cage? Why We Need to Reform Humanities Education
Presenter: Russell Berman (Stanford University)
Location: Cathedral of Learning, Room 602
Russell Berman is Director of German Studies at Stanford, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Editor of TELOS,
and recent President of the Modern Language Association. He is an expert on German literature and culture and
on cultural relations between Europe and the United States, and is a pioneer in German Cultural Studies.
In more than 80 articles and five books, he has written widely on modern German and European literature and politics,
as well as on issues in contemporary cultural theory.
Graduate Seminar
Presenter: Russell Berman (Stanford)
Announced by:
on behalf of
Graduate Seminar building on Prof. Berman's talk Is the Ivory Tower an Iron Cage? Why We Need to Reform Humanities Education
Monday, March 4th, 2013
Mughal Occidentalism: Rethinking Artistic Encounters Between Europe and Asia at the Mughal Courts of India
Presenter: Mika Natif (Harvard)
Location: Room 202 Frick Fine Art
Announced by:
on behalf of
Since the reign of Emperor Akbar the Great (d. 1605), paintings produced in Mughal India began to evince responses from Mughal artists to European art. This lecture centers on the phenomenon of what I term “Mughal Occidentalism,” namely the trans-global style and visual expression that Mughal artists and patrons developed following the meeting of Indian painting with Renaissance art; the use of European pictorial techniques by Muslim and Hindu artists; and the transformation of Christian visual culture into an Indian idiom. By analyzing visual and textual evidence, I examine these works of art from the perspective of the Mughals, and observe how Mughal artists were recontextualizing Western motifs and creating their own vernacular/cosmopolitan aesthetics. This synthesis of European and Indo-Persian pictorial traditions became the hallmark of the Mughal painting style.
Friday, March 1st, 2013
Titian's Painted Stones: Slate, Oil and the Transubstantiation of Painting
Presenter: Christopher J. Nygren (Penn)
Location: Room 202 Frick Fine Art
Announced by:
on behalf of
Titian’s Ecce Homo and Mater Dolorosa with Open Hand (both Madrid, Museo del Prado) stand out for a number of reasons. Firstly, they were not commissioned but were done as gifts, so they reflect Titian’s artistic volition rather than the will of a patron. Secondly, the materials that Titian chose to use demand attention: the Ecce Homo is painted on slate while the Mater dolorosa is painted on a slab of marble. Depending on how scholars account for problems of attribution, workshop participation, and works that have not survived, estimates of Titian’s artistic production range from about 400 works on the conservative side to more than 600. Despite these large numbers (not matched by other masters of his period like Raphael and Michelangelo), the Ecce Homo and Mater Dolorosa are the only paintings that Titian ever painted on non-traditional supports. Their outlier status, then, is clear and should make them of interest to scholars. Yet modern scholarship has essentially ignored Titian’s selection of artistic materials. This paper will examine Titian’s redeployment of the novel technique of stone painting by focusing on how the painter sought to heighten the affective immediacy of Christian devotion by drawing on the complex associations between the spiritual content of his images and the physical characteristics of their material substrates.
*Christopher J. Nygren is a Mellon Post-Doctoral Teaching Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania
Friday, March 1st, 2013 to Saturday, March 2nd, 2013
8th Annual Graduate Student Conference on the EU
"A Nobel Price? The Consequences of the European Union in Europe and in the World"
The University of Pittsburgh hosts the Eighth Annual Graduate Student Conference on the European Union, featuring Alexandre Stutzmann, Diplomatic Adviser to the President of European Parliament, as the keynote speaker. All panel sessions, including the keynote address, are open to the public and will be held in the Patrician Crown Mural Room of the Pittsburgh Athletic Association. For a full listing of panels and a schedule of public events, please visit the EUCE/ESC web page featuring the schedule of the program.
Thursday, February 28th, 2013
Provost's Inaugural Lecture - Civil War in the British Empire: America’s Violent Birth
Presenter: Holger Hoock (History)
Location: 2500 and 2501 Posvar Hall
Announced by:
on behalf of
*As part of the Provost's Inaugural Lecture Series, Holger Hoock will deliver an Inaugural Lecture as J. Carroll Amundson Professor of British History.
Pitt hosts the oldest chair in British History in the United States, endowed half a century ago this academic year.
In this talk, as a part of the Provost’s Inaugural Lecture series, Holger Hoock will discuss work in progress on
violence in the American Revolutionary War as a civil war in the British Empire and in America. Most modern
histories focus on the Revolution’s ideals and tend to marginalize the physical and psychological ordeals it
entailed for so many participants. Reflecting on the geopolitical and cultural contexts of that historiographical
marginalization of violence since the late nineteenth century, Hoock will consider how we might write violence
back into the story, and to what effect. British History has long lost the special status it once enjoyed in the
American academy. Its continuing relevance will depend on how it positions itself in relation to European,
Atlantic, and wider transnational contexts. All faculty and students are most welcome. The lecture will be
followed by a reception.
Colloquium: The Origin of Rhyme
Time: 12:30 pm to 2:00 pm
Presenter: Roberto Dainotto (Duke)
Location: Cathedral of Learning, Room 602
Announced by:
on behalf of
A focus on Europe with responses by Neil Doshi (French), Randall Halle (German) and Ronald Judy (English).
Faculty and graduate students in Pitt Humanities departments can access readings for colloquia by logging in to , clicking on the tab “My Resources,” clicking on “Humanities Center,” and then clicking on “Colloquium Series” where there is a link to the pdf files. Anyone else wishing to access the readings may request the reading at humctr@pitt.edu.
Wednesday, February 27th, 2013
WHO ARE THESE GERMANS?
Presenter: Susanne Ortner-Roberts (German), Fritz Ottenheimer
Location: Cathedral of Learning, Room 208B
Announced by:
on behalf of
In music and words, two Germans from different generations reflect on the Holocaust, German history, and what it means to be German in the 21st century.
*A discussion/question and answer period will follow the talk*
ABOUT THE PERFORMERS
FRITZ OTTENHEIMER, as a Jewish boy growing up in Nazi Germany, escaped Nazi persecution by immigrating to the U.S. in 1939, and eventually fighting against Germany with the U.S. Army at the end of WWII. A retired engineer, Mr. Ottenheimer has documented his experiences surrounding the Holocaust and Post-War Germany in a memoir, “Escape and Return.” He resides in Pittsburgh, PA.
SUSANNE ORTNER-ROBERTS is a world-renowned clarinetist from Augsburg, Germany, who specializes in Jewish (Klezmer) music. As a representative of a new generation of Germans, she is committed to using words and music to promote cross-cultural understanding, and to educate others about how young Germans today deal with the atrocities of war and the Holocaust committed by their grandparents’ generation. She is the subject of the recent book “Living the Dream – Für die Musik nach Amerika” written by German Television journalist Helge Fuhst. Susanne also teaches German at the University of Pittsburgh.
Tuesday, February 26th, 2013
History and the Novel
Presenter: Roberto Dainotto (Duke)
Location: Cathedral of Learning, Room 602
Announced by:
on behalf of
Friday, February 22nd, 2013
Engendering Italy: Gaps, Contradictions, & Paradoxes of Gender on the EU Background
Presenter: Giuseppina Pellegrino, Visiting Italian Fulbright Scholar
The lecture aims to reflect on how gender relationships and femininity are represented, depicted, and performed in contemporary Italy. Such a reflection is linked to the peculiarity of the Italian mediascape from a political and cultural viewpoint, and has direct consequences on political life and women’s movements. In this respect, the talk offers an overview of Italian society through the lens of gender and resistance to the influence of the media in monopolizing the evolution of women’s representations and identity in the country. From another perspective, this Italian viewpoint is framed and contextualized against the backdrop of the EU, as a driving force of change and a site of both quantitative and qualitative comparison for gender representation, equality, and domestic violence. A reception in honor of Visiting Italian Fulbright will be held immediately after the lecture. Light refreshments will be served.
Thursday, February 21st, 2013
Karl Marx and Abraham Lincoln: An Unexpected Convergence
Presenter: Robin Blackburn (University of Essex)
Location: Frick Fine Arts Auditorium
Announced by:
on behalf of
The XIXth Annual E.P. Thompson Memorial Lecture
Robin Blackburn is Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex. He was educated at Oxford University and the London School of Economics and served as editor of New Left Review. He is author of many important books, including an influential trilogy on origins and history of Atlantic slavery: The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776-1848 (1988), The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800 (1997), and The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights (2011).
New Security Concerns in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Role of the EU
Time: 12:00 pm to 1:30 pm
Presenter: Marina Skordeli, Director of the Jean Monnet Center of Excellence at the University of Athens
The Eastern Mediterranean has long suffered from a complex security setting, which is made up of both traditional security challenges as well as asymmetric threats. More recently, we started to witness the additional effect of a couple of new challenges, which have set in motion a rebalancing of powers in the region and may threaten its stability even further: the Arab Spring and the recent offshore energy findings. These developments can affect US and European interests in multiple ways and, therefore, the EU, in coordination with Washington, should take on a pivotal role in addressing them. Dr. Skordeli previously held the role of Senior Political Advisor to the former Prime Minister of Greece, Kostas Karamanlis.
Wednesday, February 20th, 2013
The Subaltern, Again and Again
Presenter: Gayatri Spivak (Columbia)
Location: Cathedral of Learning, Room 602
Announced by:
on behalf of
Professor Spivak’s talk (and Q&A) will engage with some of the key issues confronting the western historical and intellectual tradition, especially as they relate to post-colonialism and gender.
Coffee with a Visiting Scholar
Presenter: Marina Skordeli (University of Athens)
Location: Panera, Oakland
Marina Skordeli is the Director of the Jean Monnet Center at the University of Athens). Come for an informal discussion about her work and your interests.
Tuesday, February 19th, 2013
Conversations on Europe Videoconference: "NATO: A Hammer in Search of a Nail"
Time: 12:00 pm to 1:30 pm
With its post-Cold War role in Europe behind it, an end to its role in Afghanistan planned for 2014, and new challenges in the Arab world, NATO is at yet another turning point in searching for a new role. This conversation will focus on what that role might be and how it relates to the security perspectives (broadly conceived) of the United States and its European allies. Faculty participants include Marina Skordeli, Director of the Jean Monnet Center at The University of Athens; Taylor Seybolt, Assistant Professor of International Affairs at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, The University of Pittsburgh; Ryan Hendrickson, Professor of Political Science, Eastern Illinois University; and Gulnur Aybet, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, University of Kent.
Monday, February 18th, 2013
European Crisis?
Presenter: Richard Wainwright, Visiting Professor, University of Pittsburgh School of Law
Announced by:
on behalf of
Cost: Free unless attending for PA CLE Board Credit.
As a part of the Jean Monnet Lecture on European Union Law, Professor Wainwright’s lecture will center on the economic and political problems that currently face the European Union, and will examine a possible scenario for recovery. On the economic front, EU countries are faced with high indebtedness, high unemployment, and low growth. Politically, Eurozone countries are committed to closer economic union, while the present United Kingdom government is seeding a renegotiation of its treaty ties with the EU—with the possibility that it might exit if the renegotiation is unsuccessful. Professor Wainwright has worked for more than 30 years with the European Commission’s Legal Service, including serving as the former director and head of competition policy. He has also served on the staff of Transport Commissioner Stanley Clinton Davis and as director for internal market issues in the Legal Service. Refreshments and a light dinner will be provided. This program has also been approved by the PA Continuing Legal Education Board for 1 hour of substantive credit. For more information, please call 412-648-7023 or email cile@pitt.edu.
‘We Carried Your Secrets:’ One Man’s Experience of Reconciliation in Northern Ireland
Time: 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm
Presenter: Jon McCourt, Peace Activist and Community Organizer
Location: 4500 Posvar Hall
Jon McCourt has been a community Peace Activist and a member of the Peace and Reconciliation Group in the City of Derry/Londonderry, Northern Ireland for over 30 years. As a young man he went on the first Civil Rights March in Derry in October 1968. He has been actively engaged in almost every aspect of the conflict that arose as the result of that march. He was involved in the events that have come to be known as Bloody Sunday when British soldiers clashed with civil rights protestors January 30, 1972. Since 1978 he has worked at building bridges between the two major communities in Derry, encouraging and engaging in cross community activities that have assisted in rebuilding contact, trust, and cooperation across the city. With others he founded and established the first Victim Support Service in Northern Ireland in 1986.
In this talk, Mr. McCourt will discuss his participation in the moving and ground-breaking "Theatre of Witness" production, "We Carried your Secrets" (www.theatreofwitness.org). To view a documentary about the project, visit http://vimeo.com/42328879.
Shakespeare's Two Antonios: Language, Stage History, and the History of Sexuality
Presenter: MARIANNE NOVY (English)
Location: Cathedral of Learning, Room 501G
Announced by:
on behalf of
Shakespeare's plays Merchant of Venice and Twelfth Night both contain men named Antonio who speak of their love for another male character. Both Antonios remain single at the ends of their plays while both of the men they love marry women. Recent critics often see homosexual desire in the Antonios, and productions today often emphasize their exclusion from the comic community. Some have argued, however, that these views lack historical awareness, whether because the Antonios exemplify the conventions of ideal friendship, or because the early modern period might have accepted their forms of same-sex desire. However, one Antonio could also be considered an outsider because he is a melancholy character in a comedy, and the other because he is arrested and called a pirate. This paper considers the possible outsider or insider status of these characters in relation to the characters' language and stage history and the history of sexuality.
This talk is derived from Professor Novy's book Shakespeare and Outsiders, forthcoming from Oxford University Press in June. The talk will introduce a few of the issues to be discussed in her new fall graduate course, Shakespeare, Gender, and Sexuality.
Friday, February 15th, 2013
Making Waves: Democratic Contention in Europe & Latin America Since 1848
Presenter: Kurt Weyland (UT Austin)
Announced by:
on behalf of
Kurt has written widely about democratization and methodological themes. He also has had a recent article in PS about the tenure process.
The EU's Response to the Eurozone Crisis: Deeper Integration & Closer Transatlantic Ties
Time: 11:00 am to 12:30 pm
Presenter: Klaus Welle, Secretary General of the European Parliament
The Center for Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins University will be hosting the Secretary General of the European Parliament, Klaus Welle, and will be videoconferencing with numerous schools throughout the United States for a discussion on the Eurozone Crisis, and its effects on Europe and Europe’s international relationships.
Friday, February 15th, 2013 to Saturday, February 16th, 2013
Thursday, February 14th, 2013
Colloquium: What were Jewish Books in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries?
Time: 12:30 pm to 2:00 pm
Presenter: Adam Shear (Humanities Center)
Location: Cathedral of Learning, Room 602
Announced by:
on behalf of
Reflections about Johannes Reuchlin, Some Notaries, and Some Learned Jews. With responses by Ryan McDermott (English) and Ron Zboray (Communication).
Faculty and graduate students in Pitt Humanities departments can access readings for colloquia by logging in to , clicking on the tab “My Resources,” clicking on “Humanities Center,” and then clicking on “Colloquium Series” where there is a link to the pdf files. Anyone else wishing to access the readings may request the reading at humctr@pitt.edu.
U.S. And European Relations in the Second Obama Administration
Presenter: Ron Linden (Poli Sci)
Location: Levy Hall, Rodef Shalom Congregation, 4905 Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213
Announced by:
on behalf of
Wednesday, February 13th, 2013
Translation Seminar
Presenter: Lawrence Venuti (Temple)
Location: Cathedral of Learning, Room 602
Announced by:
on behalf of
Dr. Venuti will give a seminar focusing on different ways of thinking about translation, using theory and examples of translations between English and other languages. He will focus on particular texts and ways to teach them, again, to students without strong second language skills. Amani Attia (Arabic Coordinator), Lina Insana (Associate Professor of Italian), and Gina Peirce (Assistant Director of Russian and East European Studies) will also speak at this workshop.
For seminar materials, contact: Carol M. Bové.
Tuesday, February 12th, 2013
Translation, Intertextuality, Interpretation
Presenter: Lawrence Venuti (Temple)
Location: Cathedral of Learning, Room 602
Announced by:
on behalf of
Prof. Venuti will give an overview of literary translation including the ways in which a translated text offers a set of relations, a form of intertextuality, analogous to the set offered by the source text. He will discuss particular strategies one might use with undergraduates and beginning graduate students who often lack advanced knowledge of a second language, for instance two English versions of the same source text. There will be ample opportunity for discussion.
Saturday, February 9th, 2013
Workshop: Non-Traditional Approaches to International Affairs
Location: Cathedral of Learning, Room 602
Announced by:
on behalf of
Organizer: The Marginal Theory Society
*Anyone is welcome to attend any of the presentations.*
Marginal Theory Workshop: "Non-Traditional Approaches to International
Relations"
Schedule of events:
Saturday, February 9th
9:45-10:00 - Introduction
10:00-10:30 - First Speaker - Dr. Daniel Lieberfeld - (Duquesne - Social
and Public Policy) - "Leadership and Post-conflict Reconciliation"
10:30-11:00 - Q and A
11:00-11:15 - mini-break
11:15-11:45 - Second Speaker - Dr. Robert Cavalier (CMU - Philosophy) -
"Toward a More Deliberative Democracy - Here and Abroad"
11:45-12:15 - Q and A
12:15-1:30 - long break
1:30-2:00 - Third Speaker - Katharina Nieswandt (Pitt - Philosophy) - "In
What Sense are Rights Conventional?"
2:00-2:30 - Q and A
2:30-2:45 - mini break
2:45-3:15 - Fourth Speaker - Leslie Marshall (Pitt - Political Science) -
"Economic Rights and Social Equality in Autocratic Regimes"
3:15-3:45 - Q and A
3:45-4:00 - mini break
4:00-4:30 - Fifth Speaker - Corinne Ogrodnik (Pitt - Sociology) -
"Transnational Peasant Politics and the 2008 Global Food Price Crisis"
4:30-5:00 - Q and A
5:00-6:00 - Reception
Friday, February 8th, 2013
Scottish English: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of TH-fronting, social meaning and social identity
Presenter: Robert Lawson (Birmingham City University)
Location: Cathedral of Learning, Room G-8
Announced by:
on behalf of
As a relatively new phenomenon in the phonology of Scottish English, TH-fronting has surprised sociolinguists by its rapid spread in the urban heartlands of Scotland. While attempts have been made to understand and model the influence of lexical effects, media effects and frequency effects, far less understood is the role of social identity. Using data collected as part of an ethnographic study of a high school in the south side of Glasgow, Scotland, this talk addresses this gap in the literature by considering how variants of (θ) are patterned across three adolescent male Communities of Practice. Drawing on recent work on linguistic variation and social meaning (Eckert 2000), the article explores some of the social meanings of (θ), particularly those variants which previous research has reported as being associated with ‘toughness’ in Scottish English.
The Desert Room: From Michelangelo Antonioni to New Media
Presenter: DOMIETTA TORLASCO (Minnesota)
Location: 501 Cathedral of Learning
Announced by:
on behalf of
Domietta Torlasco works at the intersection of film theory and practice and is currently an Associate Professor
of French, Italian, and Comparative Literature at Northwestern University, where she is also affiliated with the
Screen Cultures Program. She is the author of The Time of the Crime: Phenomenology, Psychoanalysis, Italian
Film (Stanford University Press, 2008) and the digital film Antigone’s Noir (2008-09). Her second book, The
Heretical Archive: Digital Memory at the End of Film is forthcoming with University of Minnesota Press in
2013.
Thursday, February 7th, 2013
Internships and Career Opportunities at the Department of State
Presenter: Patricia Guy, State Department Diplomat in Residence
Location: 3911 Posvar Hall
Patricia Guy, a Diplomat in Residence for the State Department, will visit the University of Pittsburgh to talk about the State Department’s internship program, and will provide information and answer questions about careers and job possibilities with the Department of state.
Figuring out Europe: Nation, State and the European Union in the German Public Sphere
Time: 12:30 pm to 2:00 pm
Presenter: Russell Berman, Stanford University
Location: 602 Cathedral of Learning
Responses will be offered by Nancy Condee (Global Studies), Alberta Sbragia (Political Science), and Gregor Thum (History)
"In the Center of Europe, But on the Fringe?"
Liechtenstein and European Integration
Time: 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm
Presenter: Claudia Fritsche, Ambassador of the Principality of Liechtenstein to the U.S.
Claudia Fritsche, Ambassador of Liechtenstein to the United States, joined the Office for Foreign Affairs of the Principality of Liechtenstein on June 1st, 1978 and served in a variety of diplomatic functions. Ambassador Fritsche assumed her duties as the first resident Ambassador of Liechtenstein in Washington at the beginning of October 2002 after leaving her post in New York, where she had served as the Permanent Representative of the Principality of Liechtenstein to the United Nations from 1990 to 2002. Ambassador Fritsche will discuss the unique position of Liechtenstein, a small country that lies in the heart of Europe but that is not a member state of the European Union.
TO ATTEND, PLEASE REGISTER BY EMAILING: adelnore@pitt.edu. Lunch will be served.
Wednesday, February 6th, 2013
"Shale Gas in Poland and Europe"
Time: 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm
Presenter: Dimiter Kenarov, Pulitzer Center Fellow
Mr. Dimiter Kenarov will present a lecture that focuses on shale gas in Poland and Europe which will be live videoconferenced with the European Union Center of Excellence at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.
Tuesday, February 5th, 2013
"Shale Gas: From Poland to Pennsylvania"
Presenter: Dimiter Kenarov, Pulitzer Center Fellow
Location: Frick Fine Arts Auditorium
“Shale Gas: From Poland to Pennsylvania” – Based upon his new project forthcoming that focuses on a commodity called “a game changer", promoted as a cleaner fossil alternative to coal and oil and cheered as the next step toward the American dream of energy independence. Poland is now Europe's center of shale gas. Like Pennsylvania, it embraces the promises and dangers of extraction. At the center of debate: hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and an associated largely unexplored question of global politics.
Dimiter Kenarov is a freelance journalist based in Istanbul, Turkey, and a contributing editor at the Virginia Quarterly Review. His work has also appeared in Esquire, Outside, The Nation, the International Herald Tribune, and others, and has been twice anthologized in "The Best American Travel Writing."
Toward a Theory of Narrative: Excuses and Moral Reasoning
Presenter: Fritz Breithaupt (Indiana)
Location: Cathedral of Learning, Room 602
Announced by:
on behalf of
Abstract:
Story-telling is ubiquitous, ranging from fiction to gossip, but what exactly is the core structure of narrative? This talk will propose that narrative thinking takes place when we consider alternative versions of an event – and make excuses. Based on this suggestion, the talk provides an overview of this theory of narrative and ends with a speculation about the connection of narrative and moral reasoning.
Fritz Breithaupt is professor of Germanic Studies, adjunct professor in Comparative Literature, and affiliated professor of Cognitive Science at Indiana University, Bloomington. He has published four books, co-edited four volumes, and has published about 40 full-length articles. His latest books provide humanities responses to work in cognitive science, addressing issues of empathy, narrative thinking, and moral reasoning. His work on Goethe and the romantics, as well as on European literature and philosophy since 1740 is ongoing. Currently, he is writing a book on the connection of narrative thinking and moral reasoning, as well as an English follow-up to his work on empathy, The Dark Sides of Empathy. He has received many honors and distinctions for his work, including an Alexander-von-Humboldt Fellowship, and was the first Distinguished Remak Scholar at Indiana University in 2008-09. He writes frequently for the German press, especially "Die Zeit" and "Zeit Campus."
Thursday, January 31st, 2013
Fantasies of Absolutism in Gold and Jewels: A Global History Object Lesson From Early Modern Germany
Time: 12:30 pm to 2:00 pm
Presenter: Dror Wahrman (Indiana)
Location: Cathedral of Learning, Room 602
Announced by:
on behalf of
*Part of the visit of short-term fellow Dror Wahrman
With responses by Molly Warsh (History) and Adam Shear (Religious Studies).
"US-European Cooperation" U.S. Department of State Videoconference
Time: 11:00 am to 12:00 pm
Presenter: Amy Westling, Deputy Director of the Office of European Union and Regional Affairs
As President Obama’s second term commences, the continued vitality of America’s oldest alliance remains critical, as seen by recent speculation about a US-EU free trade agreement. Simultaneously, Europe itself is in the midst of change, as its eastward expanding borders force a reassessment of European and EU identity. Ms. Amy Westling, Deputy Director of the Office of European Union and Regional Affairs, joins us from the US Department of State to discuss the continued importance and current initiatives of the evolving transatlantic partnership.
Thursday, January 31st, 2013 to Sunday, February 24th, 2013
John Gabriel Borkman
By Henrik Ibsen, Directed by Martin Giles
Presenter: Quantum Theatre
Location: Hart Building in East Liberty: 6022 Broad Street
Disgraced and destitute following a fraud scandal and imprisonment, John Gabriel Borkman paces alone in an attic room, a nightmare to those below. Downstairs his wife and former mistress--who happens to be her sister--are in for a dark and stormy night. A scorching indictment of 19th-century capitalism, Ibsen's play could be ripped from today's headlines. JGB provides a tour-de-force for three mature actors and a cautionary message for modern audiences about how unbridled lust for money and power can make you crazy.
Discounted tickets for students ($17) and faculty ($30).
Wednesdays-Saturday at 8 PM, Sunday at 7 PM
Tuesday, January 29th, 2013
The Early Modern Media Revolution: An Artist’s Perspective
Presenter: Dror Wahrman (Indiana)
Location: Cathedral of Learning, Room 602
Announced by:
on behalf of
Talk on new media in 17th century England.
POSTPONED: "(Re)Localizing the Welfare State: Multi-leveled Rural Development Policy and Cultural Memory in Wales"
Time: 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm
Presenter: Dr. William Russell Schumann III, Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh at Bradford
An author of several books posing an anthropological perspective on government, political labor, and power, Professor Schumann will offer an argument for the Welsh, UK, and EU development hierarchies, and how the organizational cultures of Welsh rural authorities shape local interpretations and administrations of UK/EU development policies. The discussion will be framed in terms of analyzing civil-state relations in a changing Wales, UK, and Europe. Following the talk Dr. Schumann will welcome questions from the audience.
Friday, January 25th, 2013
The Effects of Correcting Pronunciation of Second Language Learners
Presenter: Maritza Nemoga (Linguistics)
Location: Cathedral of Learning, Room G-8
Announced by:
on behalf of
Master's Thesis Defense:
Since the implementation of the communicative approaches in the 1970s, pronunciation in second language instruction has been overlooked. Recent research has proven pronunciation instruction and corrective feedback to be beneficial for students’ second language pronunciation. The purpose of this study was to analyze which correction method, between self-correction and explicit correction, was more effective at improving students’ pronunciation of the Spanish sounds [x] 'j' and -ø- 'h' in word-initial position. A pre-test was conducted in two groups of 18 students taking Spanish II at a private Midwestern college. The participants received instruction and models of how to pronounce words with the studied sounds. For the next seven weeks, one of the two groups used the explicit correction method and the other one used self-correction. A week before the end of the semester the post-test was conducted. A two-way ANOVA analysis served to examine the effects of the two correction methods. The findings have pedagogical implications and will show that the self-correction method benefited students’ pronunciation more.
International Financial Rescues in Europe and Beyond
Time: 12:00 pm to 1:30 pm
Presenter: Christina Schneider (UC-San Diego)
Abstract:
Why do governments provide bilateral bailouts to countries that experience
financial crises above and beyond what the IMF provides? We argue that
governments face a trade off. On one hand, they have incentives to rescue a crisis
country because they want to prevent the spread of the crisis to their own country.
On the other hand, governments experience pressures from domestic constituents
who are oftentimes opposed to financial rescues. Politicians aim to balance these
countervailing pressures. Whereas they are more likely to provide financial support
when their country’s economy is closely integrated with the crisis country’s economy,
elections may have a detrimental effect on the likelihood of a financial rescue,
particularly if the home country’s economy is not doing well itself. We test our
hypotheses using a new data set on international financial rescues by OECD countries
between 1990 and 2010. Our statistical analysis finds robust support for the
importance of domestic economic and political factors in international cooperation
during financial crises.
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2013
Openings and Closings in Video-based Computer-mediated Communication
Presenter: Marta Tecedor Cabrero (Iowa)
Location: Cathedral of Learning 204
Announced by:
on behalf of
This presentation explores how beginning learners of Spanish perform opening and closing sequences during two videoconferencing exchanges. Data were analyzed using Conversation Analysis and several patterns of interaction were identified. Discussion will focus on description of these interactional patterns and on pedagogical implications.
Marta Tecedor Cabrero, candidate for the Spanish Lecturer/Coordinator position will be on campus January 23rd and 24th.
Ms. Tecedor Cabero is a PHD candidate in Second Language Acquisition, Specialization: Technology at the University of Iowa. Her teaching interests focus on computer-based language learning and instruction, language teaching methods Spanish grammar, Spanish conversation, Spanish language courses (beginning to advanced, intensive, accelerated).
Pizza and Politics: Pomak Identifications across the Greek, Bulgarian, and Turkish Borders
Time: 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm
Presenter: Cengiz Haksoz, Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology
Location: 4625 Posvar Hall
Cengiz Haksoz, a graduate student in the Anthropology Department at Pitt, will present a portion of his dissertation, which focuses on transnational identity formation. Pizza and Politics is the EUCE/ESC’s monthly graduate student speaker forum focusing on European and European Union Studies. For more information, contact Allyson Delnore at adelnore@pitt.edu. PIZZA WILL BE SERVED.
Tuesday, January 22nd, 2013
Getting Parents Involved: A Field Experiment in Deprived Schools
Presenter: Nina Guyon (Paris School of Economics)
Location: 4716 Posvar Hall
Announced by:
on behalf of
Paper abstract
This paper provides novel evidence on the causal effect of parents’ involvement at school on
pupils’ cognitive and non-cognitive skills. Furthermore, it shows how the impact of more
involved parents on their children is amplified at the class level by peer group interaction. We
build on a large scale controlled experiment run in a French deprived educational district,
where parents of middle-school children were invited to participate in a low-cost program of
parent-school meetings on how to get better involved in their children’s education. At the end
of the school-year, we find that treated families have increased their school- and home-based
involvement activities. In turn, pupils of treatment classes have developed more positive
behavior and attitudes in school, and received better marks from their teachers. In particular,
truancy and disciplinary sanctions are reduced by more than 20% in treatment classes. Our
results suggest that improving parents’ involvement in their children’s education can
represent a highly cost-effective input in the human capital production technology.
Sponsored by: Applied Microeconomics Recruiting Seminar
Download Seminar Materials: http://www.ewi-ssl.pitt.edu/econ/files/seminars/130118_sem_Nina%20Guyon.pdf
Conversations on Europe Videoconference: "Croatia"
"The Next Member State: Croatia's Path to the European Union."
Time: 12:00 pm to 1:30 pm
Presenter: EUCE/ESC Director Ron Linden, Moderator; REES Director Robert Hayden and Associate Director Andrew Konitzer, Presenters
The EUCE/ESC, in cooperation with the Center for Russian and East European History (REES) will host the next in our ongoing series of virtual roundtables on the subject of Croatia’s impending accession as the 28th member state of the European Union. The title of the video conference is “The Next Member State: Croatia’s Path to the European Union”. REES Associate Director Andrew Konitzer will moderate. REES Center Director Robert Hayden will join other distinguished panelists from Europe and other EUCEs throughout the U.S. in a discussion of the Europeanization process in the western Balkans, the impact on Croatia (and on the EU) of enlargement, and related topics. Audience participation is welcome.
Thursday, January 17th, 2013
The Impossible Films of Vera, Countess of Cathcart
Presenter: Mark Lynn Anderson (Film Studies)
Location: Cathedral of Learning, Room 1228
Announced by:
on behalf of
Mark Lynn Anderson is an associate professor of Film Studies in the Department of English at the University of Pittsburgh. He is interested in the relations between media institutions and radical democracy, and has published essays on star scandals, media censorship, and early film education. His forthcoming book, Twilight of the Idols, examines the relations between early Hollywood stardom and the human sciences.
Wednesday, January 16th, 2013
International Career ToolKit Series: Working or Volunteering Abroad after Graduation
Hear first hand experiences and get contacts for working/volunteering abroad
Presenter: Recent Pitt Alumni and local Peace Corp representative
Location: 4217 Posvar Hall
Many graduate programs want students to gain "real world" experience before enrolling in their respective programs. This session will help students plan out how and where to work or volunteer abroad. Recent Pitt alumni with experience working in India, El Salvador, Ecuador and Cape Verde will share their stories and how best connect with their organizations, and Pitt staff will have resources on hand to help you to secure overseas experience. Jonnett Maurer, the Peace Corp field based recruiter will also be there to answer questions. Next month (Feb 21, 2013) watch for Teaching English Abroad, as part of the International Career Toolkit Series.
Pulpit, Politics and Pathos: Protestant Rhetoric and the National Socialist Revolution
Time: 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm
Presenter: Professor Angela Dienhart Hancock, Assistant Professor of Homiletics and Worship, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary
Location: 2628 Cathedral of Learning
Announced by:
on behalf of
Professor Hancock’s research interests have been primarily focused on the intersections made between theology, politics, and rhetoric. In this Brown Bag Lunch Colloquium Series, she examines how the dominant political rhetoric at the end of the Weimar years infiltrates the language of the church, questioning what factors influenced the mix of gospel and Germanness.
Friday, December 7th, 2012
Tradition and Deconstruction
Part of the "Speaking in Tongues" Lecture and Seminar Series
Presenter: Dr. Philipp Rosemann
Location: Duquesne University
Dr. Rosemann will examine the relationship between the Christian intellectual tradition and the postmodern deconstructionist approach. Arguing that although tradition and deconstruction may appear inimical, he will present a case for why they imply and require each other. Dr. Rosemann's talk will take the form of a dialogue between texts by the Belgian Denis the Carthusian, the great 15th-century theologian who lived in Germany, and Martin Heidegger, the German philosopher whose reflections on Destruktion in Being and Time remain seminal for the deconstructionist method.
Thursday, December 6th, 2012
Vernacularity and Alienation
Part of the "Speaking in Tongues" Lecture and Seminar Series
Presenter: Dr. Philipp Rosemann
A native German trained in Ireland and Belgium, and now working in the U.S., Professor Rosemann has written academic work in German, French, and English, and has reflected deeply on the linguistic and cultural impacts of colonialism while teaching in Uganda. During this presentation he will reflect on how the meaning of vernacular language and culture might change in the future under pressures of globalization. This lecture is designed particularly with an undergraduate audience in mind.
Seminar: Robert Grosseteste at Munich
Time: 12:30 pm to 2:00 pm
Presenter: PHILIPP ROSEMANN (Dallas)
Location: Cathedral of Learning 126 (Polish Nationality Room)
Medieval Latin Reading Group seminar on the reception of mystical theology in fifteenth-century Munich and the significance of “minor” texts for the development of intellectual traditions.
We will discuss a short portion from Robert Grosseteste at Munich, Dallas Medieval Texts and Translations 14 (Louvain and Paris: Peeters, 2012). The reading, approximately two pages, will be circulated in advance in Latin and English translation. All are welcome, regardless of your prior involvement in the reading group. No Latin required.
Prof. Rosemann is chair of the department of philosophy at the University of Dallas. Trained in the history of medieval philosophy and modern continental philosophy, he has written several books at the intersection of these areas: Omne ens est aliquid. Introduction à la lecture du "système" philosophique de saint Thomas d'Aquin (Peeters, 1996); Omne agens agit sibi simile: A "Repetition" of Scholastic Metaphysics (Leuven University Press, 1996); Understanding Scholastic Thought with Foucault (The New Middle Ages series; St. Martin’s, 1999). In recent years, he has combined manuscript and book history with historical theology and institutional history in his studies of Lombard’s Sentences, the foundational text of the medieval university: Peter Lombard (Oxford University Press, 2004); The Story of a Great Medieval Book: Peter Lombard's "Sentences," (University of Toronto Press, 2007); and Mediaeval Commentaries on the "Sentences" of Peter Lombard, vol. 2. (ed.) (Brill, 2010). He edits the series Dallas Medieval Texts and Translations, and is currently working on tradition and transgression.
EuroChallenge Orientation
Wednesday, December 5th, 2012
"The Political Ecology of the Early Spanish Caribbean"
Presenter: Molly Warsh, Asst. Professor, Dept. of History
Location: 3703 Posvar Hall
Announced by:
on behalf of
Tuesday, December 4th, 2012
Weimar Cinema Screenings (German Cinema 1919-1933)
Location: Lawrence Hall, Room 209
Announced by:
on behalf of
All films will have subtitles accessible to non-German speaking audiences. All film screenings are open to the public. All films will be DVD projection. Many of these films are rare and hard to find. I would encourage you to bring friends so they can take advantage of the experience.
Tuesday September 11
Nerven [Nerves] (Robert Reiner 1919)
Die Austernprinzessin [The Oyster Princess] (Ernst Lubitsch 1919)
Tuesday September 18
Schloß Vogeloed [Castle Vogeloed] (F.W. Murnau 1921)
Nosferatu (F,W. Murnau 1922)
Tuesday September 25
Die freudlose Gasse [Joyless Streets] (Georg Wilhelm Pabst 1925)
Asphalt (Joe May 1929)
Tuesday October 2
Die Elf Teufel [The Eleven Devils] (Zoltan Korda 1927)
König der Mittelstürmer [The Champion of the Stadium] (Fritz Freisler 1927)
Tuesday October 9
Metropolis (Fritz Lang 1927)
Algol (Hans Werckmeister 1920)
Wunder der Schöpfung [Our Heavenly Bodies] (Hanns Walter Kornblum 1925)
Tuesday October 16
Berlin, die Sinfonie der Großstadt [Berlin the Symphony of the Great City] (Walter Ruttmann 1927)
Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed [The Adventures of Prince Achmed] (Lotte Reiniger, 1923-26)
Tuesday October 23
Büchse der Pandora [Pandora’s Box] (Georg Wilhelm Pabst 1929)
Der Letzte Mann [Last Laugh] (F. W. Murnau 1924)
Tuesday October 30
Der Blaue Engel [The Blue Angel] (Josef Von Sternberg 1930)
Tuesday November 6
Anders als die Andern [Different from the Others] (Richard Oswald 1919)
Mädchen in Uniform [Girls in Uniform] (Leontine Sagan 1931)
Tuesday November 13
Menschen am Sonntag [People on Sunday] (Robert Siodmak 1930)
Tuesday November 20
Die Dreigroschenoper [Three Penny Opera] (Georg Wlhelm Pabst 1931)
Tuesday November 27
Kuhle Wampe [To Whom Does the World Belong?] (Slatan Dudow 1932)
Tuesday December 4
Die Drei von der Tankstelle [Three Men and Lilian] (Wilhelm Thiele 1930)
Der Kongress Tanzt [The Congress Dances] (Erik Charell 1931)
