A dialogue between Deborah Cowen, Associate Professor of Geography, University of Toronto, and Brian Holmes, internationally known art critic and cultural theorist.

Deborah Cowen has written extensively on militarism, violence, and security, cities and social justice, and geographies of citizenship and labor. Her most recent book is The Deadly Life of Logistics: Mapping Violence in Global Trade.

How do people deal with the challenges of moving across borders, seeing others move into the places where they live, and perhaps having to move elsewhere as a result? What is the relationship between these different kinds of moving and the ways that people experience them? And what factors are most significant in shaping such relationships and experiences?

In our workshop, we will explore these questions and others that they generate while reading the following novels: Hopes and Other Dangerous Pursuits, Enrique's Journey, Americanah, and Them. Books will be provided for free.

With the support of the Provost’s Integrative Social Science Research Initiative, we (an interdisciplinary collective of scholars, listed below) are planning a working conference on gender and violence for Thursday, March 17 & Friday, March 18, 2016. With this announcement, we invite applications from faculty, post-docs, and graduate students across campus. Our twin mandates are to set an agenda and develop an audience for a new generation of work on gender and violence.

Participate in a classroom simulation that relives negotiations on air pollution and acid rain among European nations between 1979-1989.

The international simulation "Acid Rain in the European Environment" incorporates social studies, chemistry, and English content. Students engage in analyzing primary source documents as well as scientific data and graphs.

This month’s session of our Conversation on Europe series will be devoted to the recent social movements and electoral dynamics within both the U.S. and Europe that reflect a rise in populist and right wing movements. Polarizing figures like Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen have grabbed headlines on both sides of the Atlantic, attracted enthusiastic crowds at public rallies, and prompted a great deal of liberal hand-wringing in social media forums. How electorally significant are these individuals and movements? What accounts for their rise in popularity?

This Institute offers area secondary school French teachers an opportunity to maintain or improve their language skills, to develop deeper understanding of French culture and its global influence, and to share relevant teaching strategies. The French Immersion Institute hosts three Saturday workshops through the year and an intensive, weeklong workshop beginning in the summer of 2016.

This joint presentation will show how plague in the fourteenth century and influenza in the early twentieth century seriously shook up global population and society, with attention to the new research methods than have enabled scholars to understand more about these pandemics themselves and their implications for human society.

Presenters:
Patrick Manning, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of World History, University of Pittsburgh; Siddharth Chandra, Professor of Economics, Michigan State University

Join us for an informal lunch discussion about current events in Iran and Iranian life in Pittsburgh.

Special Guests: Illah R. Nourbakhsh, Prof of Robotics at CMU and the Director of the CREATE Lab.

Ali Masalehdan, PhD in Comparative Politics and Chair of the Iranian Nationality Room.

The 28 member states of the European Union have faced considerable challenges of late as hundreds of thousands of migrants flood the land and sea borders to enter Europe. It is clear that the members do not all agree on how to handle the crisis. But the movement of people continues unabated. And with no end in sight to the conflicts that prompt many people to make their way to Europe at any cost, it is likely to continue for some time.

Anthony Bogues is the Asa Messer Professor of Humanities and Critical Theory and Professor of Africana Studies and African and African Diaspora Art, Brown University.