Asian Studies Center

Synonyms: 
ASC
Asian Studies

SCREENSHOT: Silent Asia 2025

Event Status: 
As Scheduled
Date: 
Mon, 04/07/2025 - 19:00 to 21:00

Our annual Silent Asia film screening is a collaboration with the Department of Music to showcase student musical compositions in tandem with the Chinese silent film Cave of the Silken Web (1927). 

Location: 
Frick Fine Arts 125

Qissa Pitt International Storytelling & Open Mic Night

Presenter: 
Molly McSweeney
Event Status: 
As Scheduled
Date: 
Fri, 03/21/2025 - 17:00 to 19:30

The University Center for International Studies is excited to hold its first annual Qissa (story in Arabic), a celebration of heritage, culture, and personal experiences through storytelling. We invite all Pitt students to share your internationally-focused story using various creative forms and listen to others in this unique performance setting.

Location: 
Global Hub
Contact Person: 
Molly McSweeney
Contact Email: 
mcm206@pitt.edu

The “Crisis” of Sociality: Caring for the Dead Otherwise

Subtitle: 
Presenter: 
Event Status: 
As Scheduled
Security Notice: Event Changed: 
Date: 
Tue, 03/18/2025 - 12:00 to 14:00

Responding to the record low birthrate, in 2023, then Prime Minister Fumio Kishida declared Japan “on the brink of not being able to maintain social functions.” Seeing this as a crisis of social reproduction, he announced policies to incentivize young people into having children—to reembrace the family as the center of life/livelihood. As sociality continues to downsize in Japan—to single households, solo lifestyles, childless futures—the keynote asks how these changes affect the elderly who once counted on “the family” to both care for and bury them. 

Location: 
University Club Conference Room A
Cost: 
Contact Person: 
Contact Phone: 
Contact Email: 

CANCELED Contested Environmentalism: Trees and the Making of Modern China

Event Status: 
Canceled
Date: 
Fri, 04/04/2025 - 13:30 to 14:30

For decades, tree planting has been at the heart of Chinese environmental endeavors, and forestry is pivotal to its environmentalism and green image more generally. During the Mao era, while forests were razed to fuel rapid increases in industrial production, the "Greening the Motherland" campaign also promoted conservationist tree-planting nationwide.

Location: 
Posvar Hall 3610

Philippines-China Relations: Reflections on Threats and Resilience

Event Status: 
As Scheduled
Date: 
Wed, 03/12/2025 - 13:30 to 14:30

Tina S. Clemente is Professor at the Asian Center, University of the Philippines (UP), Diliman. She earned her Ph.D. at the School of Economics at the same university. Her research interests include China Studies, Philippines–China economic relations, economic history, and development. Dr. Clemente is a former president of the Philippine Association for Chinese Studies and the first editor-in-chief of the Chinese Studies Journal. In 2022, Dr.

Location: 
Posvar Hall 3911

Standardization and Nationalization in Wartime Japan

Event Status: 
As Scheduled
Date: 
Tue, 03/11/2025 - 16:30 to 18:00

In the 1990s, two joint studies by Japanese and U.S. researchers were published: Total War and “Modernization” and Deconstructing Nationality. The continuity between the prewar and postwar periods and the constructability of the concept of nation, as these two studies argue, is already becoming common knowledge. However, the specific constructiveness of the concept of nation in wartime Japan has not been fully explored.

Location: 
Cathedral of Learning 149

China Studies in the Philippines: Perceptions and Practice

Event Status: 
As Scheduled
Date: 
Mon, 03/10/2025 - 15:00 to 17:00

Tina S. Clemente is Professor at the Asian Center, University of the Philippines (UP), Diliman. She earned her Ph.D. at the School of Economics at the same university. Her research interests include China Studies, Philippines–China economic relations, economic history, and development.

Location: 
Posvar Hall 4130

A Historical Overview of Cultural Interactions between Japan and Muslims in China

Event Status: 
As Scheduled
Date: 
Wed, 03/12/2025 - 15:30 to 17:30

Noriko Unno, PhD, is an assistant professor at Osaka University. This talk traces the history of cultural interactions between Japan and the Hui people (Sinophone Muslims), an ethnic minority group in the People's Republic of China said to be descended from foreign Muslims who migrated to China from today’s Middle East, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia from the seventh to fourteenth century.

Location: 
Posvar Hall 4130

Yellow Peril in Vladivostok: The Chinese Diaspora in Russia and the Soviet Union

Subtitle: 
Presenter: 
Sören Urbansky, Ruhr University Bochum
Event Status: 
As Scheduled
Security Notice: Event Changed: 
Date: 
Wed, 04/03/2024 - 12:00 to Thu, 04/03/2025 - 13:30

Dr. Urbansky discusses the challenges faced by Chinese immigrants during the late Tsarist Empire and early Soviet Union, highlighting the racial and cultural prejudices that fueled hostilities in urban settings. His analysis explores how these early interactions shaped the experiences and perceptions of Chinese communities in a rapidly changing socio-political landscape.

Location: 
4217 Posvar Hall
Cost: 
Free
Contact Person: 
Erica Edwards
Contact Phone: 
Contact Email: 
EEE36@pitt.edu

UCIS Graduation Ceremony & Reception

Event Status: 
As Scheduled
Date: 
Thu, 05/01/2025 - 13:00

The University Center for International Studies cordially invites students graduating in Spring and Summer 2025 to celebrate their academic achievements and receive their credentials at the University Center for International Studies’ Graduation Ceremony in the Charity Randall Theater followed by a reception in the Schenley Plaza Tent.

Location: 
Charity Randall Theatre

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