Coffee and cookies provided

Talk by Yiju Huang, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Lecture by Dr. Laura Brown. Roadsides in Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, like other Indian cities, bloom with small grocery shops which offer their regular customers relatively high prices in return for the opportunity to buy goods on credit. Drawing on observations, interviews, and recordings of interactions in and around three such shops between the fall of 2005 and summer of 2008, I examine how customers and shopkeepers strive to negotiate potential conflicts in ways that preserve a sense of mutual obligation and trust.

Deborah Wong, Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of California, Riverside, poses the question: Why do ethnomusicologists still rely on books to present their scholarship? This presentation will consider the challenges that research on taiko (Japanese/American drumming) poses to textual representation, and addresses how any research on performance should push at the limits of the page.

For Pitt undergraduate students considering study abroad in Asia, please join us for an information session about the many program options in Japan, South Korea, China, India, and other countries that are available to you! We will be answering questions, helping you to find a program that best fits your needs and budget, and offering information about scholarships at Pitt and outside the university, as well as inviting past program participants to come and share their experiences with others!

For Pitt undergraduate students considering study abroad, please join us for an information session about two great Pitt-run summer programs, Pitt in China and Pitt in India! We will be answering questions, helping you to find a program that best fits your needs and budget, and offering information about scholarships at Pitt and outside the university. A second session relevant to all study abroad in Asia programs will be held in January 2011.

Part of the Global Lens 2010 Series. In a poor mining town in western China, the stories of a father and his two children intersect and intertwine, illuminating complicated relationships hidden beneath the community's hardened exterior. Accused of an affair with her manager, the attractive daughter of the household finds herself spurned by her boyfriend and forced to accept an arranged marriage.

Abstract TBA.