Urbanized is about the design of cities, which looks at the issues and strategies behind urban design and features some of the world's foremost architects, planners, policymakers, builders, and thinkers. Over half the world's population now lives in an urban area, and 75% will call a city home by 2050. But while some cities are experiencing explosive growth, others are shrinking. The challenges of balancing housing, mobility, public space, civic and economic development, and environmental policy are fast becoming universal concerns.

Few people know the fascinating history of tea growing and making. This intriguing documentary aims to change that by following renowned tea importer David Lee Hoffman as he scours the far-flung corners of China to find the richest teas on earth. Tea making is an art and tradition that goes back generations in the East, and Hoffman makes it his goal to bring to the rest of the world the exquisite teas produced by struggling small farmers. This film will be accompanies by a tea tasting featuring Chinese teas and dessert after the screening.

While India is perceived as an emerging market, the stories of the plundering of natural resources and the systematic annihilation of the indigenous peoples go unheard. In this race to make India a superpower, and a growing media industry that champions this idea, social inequality has reached its zenith, and easily gets pushed aside. What, then, is the future of the people who grow food with their hands; wo have long been guarding forests and rivers--even before climate change could touch them?

Dr. Luckacs will examine new labor subjectivities such as the net idols that became famous by posting their photos and diaries on the web, cell phone novelists whose novels have recently come to dominate literary bestseller lists, and entrepreneurial homemakers who conjure wealth from day trading. The subjects of mass culture theory, digital media theory, work and play, consumer culture, and Japan in the twenty-first century are also topics for discussion.

To register for the event, visit: www.us-japan.org/jasp/events.html

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.

A campaign emerged in early 20th-century Bangkok which sought to control the acquisition of political power by the city’s growing migrant population and cultivate support for the absolute monarchy. Bangkok eventually developed into two cities that shared the same space: the capital of a sovereign nation-state under the authority of a ‘Thai’ absolute monarchy and a thriving port populated mostly by ‘Chinese’ migrants who were governed by extra-territorial laws.

Yinzling: The University of Pittsburgh Undergraduate Linguistics Club is hosting a Japanese movie night featuring the movie “After Life” (1998, Hirokazu Koreeda), about people who, after death, have just one week to choose one memory to keep for eternity. Snacks and drinks will be provided.

Although they sell vegetables, milk packets, and cigarettes; owners of small roadside grocery shops in southern India might be described as in the business of time-travel. Shopkeepers’ survival depends on their ability to successfully shift objects and obligations between multiple and conflicting temporal systems. Drawing on recordings of interactions gathered between 2005-08, Brown traces how shopkeepers use refrigeration, accounts of debt, and conversations with customers to negotiate and profit from temporal troubles.

The personal wealth of state office holders and their associates has exploded during the three decades of China’s revived market economy. This is seen in such varied phenomena as the recent reports on the $2.7 billion in assets of Premier Wen Jiabao and family, and the high number and rank of state officials linked to a private firm in the Yuanhua smuggling scandal. How can corruption of this magnitude be explained?

Do you know how to prove how well you speak Japanese, Chinese or Korean? Come learn about the Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI), one of the most recognized proficiency tests in the U.S., and how to show off your abilities for scholarships, jobs and more! Hear from Pitt instructors and students who have taken the OPI and see a sample interview in Japanese and Chinese.