Are you graduating soon? Wondering what your next adventure could be? Learn about the Japan Exchange & Teaching (JET) Program. It is a great opportunity for college graduates to work in Japan as Assistant Language Teachers (ALTs) or Coordinators for International Relations (CIRs). Featuring a presentation by Pittsburgh JET Alumni Association President Smitah Prasadh and a Q&A session with a panel of JET alumni.

Documentary, 2007. Director: Mike Mills

Starring Hiyaso Hayashiguchi, Michiko Ishikawa, Taketoshi Hayashiguchi.

Running time: 1 hr 22 min.

Chris Hill will be commentator for the Junior Faculty Manuscript Workshop on Raja Adal's manuscript.

2nd chapter of the book "Given to the Goddess: “Yellamma, Her Wives, and the Question of Religion.” and Lawrence Cohen, “The Gay Guru: Fallibility, unworldliness, and the scene of instruction”

Open to faculty and graduate students.

Drawing on her own research into a contemporary South Indian practice in which girls are married to a goddess, as well as other ethnographies and histories, this talk takes up the question of sex in the house of religion. It traces a genealogy of the term sacred marriage as a category of comparative religion and considers the ways sex and religion have been produced as discrete from each other.

“From Madness to Medicine in Japanese Culture”
The academic conference is interested in contextualizing ideas about madness and mental health in the fields of literature and art as well as anthropology and medicine, particularly the history of medicine. Our goal is to more clearly articulate what the boundaries of “health” and “illness” are and how those definitions have fluctuated through Japan’s experience of modernity and post-modernity.

What resources for comparative understanding and critique may be gleaned from our scholarly work in particular regions? Answers to this question turn in part on how we take “area” to matter in area studies: as a geographic domain of expertise, or instead as an acknowledgement that our knowledge is necessarily shaped by the contexts in which it arises. This exploratory talk will seek to draw out potential sources of insight into this problem and its implications by reflecting on three anthropological projects pursued between the United States and south India over the last fifteen years.

When a drunk passenger causes cab driver Lao Shi to swerve and hit a motorcyclist, Lao Shi finds himself responsible for the man’s medical bills. On the verge of losing everything he has, the cabby must find some way to survive. Old Stone exposes many social injustices and a general indifference to one another in modern China.

A family hires a stranger to work in their business, but he begins to meddle in their family life. A drama, thriller, and crime film all in one, Harmonium explores how families interact with each other and how those relationships change when under extreme stress. Themes of karma and redemption are present with an engaging emotional buildup and release.

An eccentric hunter and taxidermist accidentally traps himself in his basement. With little food and no water, Dr. Ahmad Kupal must survive using creative and desperate means. With the tag line, “You can’t be alone in this world!”, Kupal is a film that looks at the measures people will take in a crisis and the importance of companionship.