French Immersion institutes are designed for middle and high school French teachers, as well as French majors to broaden their cultural understanding of current events and international studies regarding French-speaking countries, to strengthen their French listening and speaking skills, and to share strategies for the teaching of French language and culture. We will be offering the following workshop spring, 2012

Topic: "Les Elections Présidentielles et Législatives Françaises de 2012

Professor von Dirke is developing a two-semester course sequence entitled "German for Social Scientists." The first part is largely historical and the second will be more theoretical with a political science/sociology orientation. The course will be pitched to facilitate the transition from third to fourth year language level. It is also designed to allow students to develop the semantic repertoire (specific social science terminology, for example) necessary to read subject-specific academic texts.

Trust in political institutions is one of the key elements which make representative democracies work. Trust creates a connection between citizens and representative political institutions. Democratic governments which enjoy a large degree of trust also tend to have higher degrees of legitimacy and policy efficacy. In Europe's multi-level governance structure, it is imperative to learn more about the determinants of trust in EU institutions. With the increasing salience of EU issues, are domestic proxies still a key determinant of evaluating EU institutions?

Professor of Music Gordon Thomposon discussed an episode in music history when on the same day the Beatles released their album Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band and the BBC announced that the band would represent the UK in the world's first global television broadcast. Simultaneously, the BBC censors were deciding to ban the recording "A Day in the Life" believing that the song promoted drug use. Thomposon situates the decision to block the broadcast of one of the most important recordings of the 20th century at the intersection of culture, politics, and semiotics.

This concert represents the first installment of IonSound's Leaving a Legacy project. The group performed commissions by three Pittsburgh composers, Christian Kriegeskotte, Philip Thompson, and Nizan Leibovich. Each work was inspired by, or created in collaboration with a visual art form: from the 16th century woodcuts by Hans Holbein, to a 19th century painting by Henri Matisse, to an interpretation of of the origins of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina.

Professor Vivian Curran will moderate this panel discussion featuring Olivier Dutheillet de Lamothe, a judge on France's Council of State, the Supreme Court of Public Law and William A. Fletcher, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

In this talk, Toker lays out the problem of understanding seven especially perplexing tombs out of the 130 graves he excavated when directing the archaeological campaign below the Cathedral of Florence.

Cohen argues that Hirschhorn's installations in banlieues of Amsterdam do not attempt to mobilize the precariat for legislative changes and civil rights, but instead, to redefine preexisting terms of attention/circulation concerning their widely stereotyped and marginalized publicity. In other words, the artist challenges the monocular, homogenizing vision of a dominant public and mediascape.

SÚM was a loosely affiliated artist's collective that was founded following a 1965 self-organized exhibition of works by Jón Gunnar Árnason, Hreinn Friofinnsson, Sigurjón Jóhannsson, and Haukur Sturluson. In this talk, Pollentier discusses the emergence of SÚM, provides a brief overview of the group's major projects, and examines how the collective practices of its members provided a critique of the political and cultural environment of the 1960s and 70s.