Pitt Model UN is a simulation of the sessions of the United Nations. This is an opportunity for high school students to apply prior research and studies in a “real-world” context and practice diplomacy, negotiating, and resolution writing. The 2016 event is the 20th annual Pitt Model UN conference.

Le Thi Binh is Community Solutions Program Fellow and a visiting scholar at the University of Pittsburgh IISE. She holds a master’s degree in Development Studies from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. She has also worked extensively with many different organizations, including the Asian Development Bank, Vietnam Skills for Employment Project funded by the Canadian Government, and Open Resources Workshop funded by UNESCO Vietnam.

Please join us on Fri., Nov. 4, 2016, from 4–6pm in the University Art Gallery in the Frick Fine Arts Building for a festive opening for two concurrent exhibitions organized by HAA students and faculty: Chinese Apartment Art: Primary Documents from Gao Minglu's Archive, 1970s-1990s, organized by graduate students from HAA 2600 Special Topic on Chinese Art Seminar, and Paradoxes of Play: Concrete and Conceptualist Proposals from Brazil and Beyond, this year’s undergraduate Museum Studies exhibition.

Both exhibitions will run through December 9, 2016.

The Popoki Friendship Story project began shortly after the March 11, 2011 triple disaster (earthquake, tsunami, nuclear meltdown) in north eastern Japan. At first, the project involved drawing freely on a long cloth decorated on one end with a drawing of cat named Popoki. She found that people often draw what they cannot, or do not, express in words and that drawing helps people to begin to interact with one another.

Rian Thum’s research and teaching are generally concerned with the overlap of China and the Muslim World. He argues that the Uyghurs - and their place in China today - can only be understood in the light of longstanding traditions of local pilgrimage and manuscript culture.

Morgan Liu is a cultural anthropologist studying Islamic knowledge and practice in post-Soviet Central Asia, focusing on Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. He is interested in ethnographic approaches to the state, postsocialism, space, and agency. Liu takes a comparative look at notions of just society across the Middle East, Russia, and Asia.

Georgetown University professor, Dr. James Millward, discusses the ancestors of the guitar, viola, mandolin and other members of the stringed instrument family that hail from Central Eurasia and traveled both east and west along what we call the “Silk Road.” Silk Road interactions involved more than the conveyance of a thing from point A to point B; these conversations laid the shared substratum of old world civilization and continue to resonate today.

Director Lauren Knapp will present her documentary film, which shows Mongolia’s capital city, Ulaanbaatar (UB), through the eyes of its boldest musicians. Beginning in the 1970s, rock music was the catalyst for freedom, the vehicle for international curiosity, and now, the medium for Mongolian nationalism. It follows the story of Mohanik, one of today’s most promising independent bands, as they create a new sound for their country and discover what it means to be Mongolian today.

Based on several years of ethnographic and policy research in China, Brazil, and the United States, this talk connects the dots between the changing character of global resource geopolitics, Brazil-China relations, and territorial struggles in primary mining sites in the frontier regions of both countries. Dr. Klinger’s multi-scaled research illuminates the key roles of these two complex and emerging economies in contemporary international affairs.

Pitt's International Week is back! Events all week long will focus on international and global topics! Be sure to enter the International Week Contest to win a study abroad scholarship, attending five events gets you one entry and attending seven get you two!