Albeit the quantity of people with Estonian ancestry in the United States is not remarkable on a numeric scale – according to the 2000 census, it comprises of merely 25 000 people – it is a very large number both in the context of the global Estonian diaspora as well as the nation as a whole with less than a million representatives altogether. Moreover, the lived reality and corresponding story of Estonians in the United States is still a largely untapped resource in the exploration of ethnicity in America.

A specialist of political and economic issues in Europe and the Middle East, Dr. Woertz manages CIDOB’s partnership with the Moroccan OCP Foundation. Formerly he was a visiting fellow at Princeton University, and Director of Economic Studies of the Gulf Research Center (GRC) in Dubai. He also worked for banks in Germany and the United Arab Emirates, and is a contributor and commentator to international and regional media outlets like the Financial Times, The National, and Al Arabiya.

In this lecture, Nancy Scheper-Hughes will discuss the political, economic and moral economies that have transformed the experiences of life and death in the interior of Northeast Brazil, 20 years after the publication of Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil. Her controversial discussion of mother love and child death is one of her most well-known – though least well-understood – theses. She will clarify her argument and explain how a sexual and reproductive revolution came about in the first decade of the 21st century.

Francisco Zamora Loboch is one of the most mature and talented of the independence era Equato-Guinean writers. He is a poet, novelist, musician, essayist and sports writer, and was part of the original group of intellectuals exiled by the first Nguema dictatorship in 1971. He was also a participant in the many attempts by his compatriots in exile, to organize political resistance to the dictatorship from Spain.

Neil Larsen is the author of several important books in critical theory: “Determinations: Essays on Theory, Narrative and Nation in the Americas” (2001), “Reading North by South: On Latin American Literature, Culture and Politics” (1995) and “Modernism and Hegemony: a Materialist Critique of Aesthetic Agencies” (1990), as well as of numerous essays and critical introductions. He is currently working on two books that will seek to establish what he terms “an advanced, methodical introduction to the workings of Marxian critique in the literary and cultural sphere.”

This colloquium will highlight the research of John Lyon (Chair, Department of German), published in his second monograph "Out of Place. German Realism, Displacement and Modernity" (Bloomsbury, 2013) in conjunction with the scholarship of Eric Downing (Professor of German; Frank Borden and Barbara Lasater Hanes Distinguished Term Professor of English and Comparative Literature; Adjunct Professor of Classics, University of North Carolina). William Scott (Professor of English, University of Pittsburgh) will offer a response.

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

China Today is a one-credit (Pitt)/ three-unit (CMU) mini course, consisting of 14 hours of classes over a weekend, with a major paper assignment to be completed for credit. This course is created for undergraduate and graduate students. However, K-12 educators, business and community members are welcome to attend all or sections of the course for free. The course will open with two keynote lectures on Friday evening on an overview of the issues. This will be followed by instructional lectures on Saturday on the various themes by experts in the fields.

High-tech science it has placed the archetypically medieval diseases of plague and leprosy at the forefront of new methods to investigate the major diseases that have afflicted humans on every inhabited continent, in every period of human existence. Not simply plague and leprosy, but also tuberculosis, malaria, smallpox, syphilis, cholera, and even the most recent global scourge, HIV/AIDS, can all now be investigated historically by combining the disciplinary perspectives of molecular genetics, bioarcheology, and documentary-based historical analysis.

The Global Studies Center and the African Studies Program invites Pitt students to dialogue with students at American University in Cairo (AUC) on topics concerning politics, economics, revolutions, religion, terrorism, American foreign policy, women’s rights, occupation, sharia law and more. All the topics you shouldn’t discuss at a cocktail party! The Egyptian students are enrolled in a interdisciplinary global issues course at AUC. Each session facilitated by Dr. Riham Bahi, AUC and Dr.