Did World History arise suddenly in the late-20th-century U.S., either because of individuals such as William McNeill or movements such as the World History Association? Or did world history arise more gradually throughout the 20th century through rethinking of universal and Eurocentric histories?

Katja Naumann takes the latter approach, emphasizing the gradual establishment of world-historical criteria from 1920 to 1970, for instance through “general education.”

In Person:
3703 WW Posvar Hall
Reception to follow

Live Online:
Link from the
World History Center at:

Join us on Tuesday, April 3rd as three alumni of the European Studies Center discuss how their interests in

INFORMATION SESSION: Career and Internship Opportunities with the U.S. Dept. of State

Tom Armbruster
Senior Foreign Service Officer
Diplomat in Residence
City College of New York

Date: April 4th, 2012
Time: 1:00
Place: 4130 Posvar Hall

Professor Wesche researches in the 17th through the 21st Centuries and is particularly interested in poetics and rhetoric, drama, and myth. The author of two monographs (Der Vers im Drama. Studien zur Theorie und Verwendung im deutschsprachigen Sprechtheater des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts. [2009] and Literarische Diversität. Abweichungen, Lizenzen und Spielräume in der deutschen Poesie und Poetik der Barockzeit. [2004]) and editor of another four volumes and numerous articles, Professor Wesche will present his recent research on literature, biology, and the transfer of knowledge.

Is there such a thing as Jewish horror? Looking at examples of what has frightened Jews over three millennia of literary history, we'll venture some conclusions.

From the earliest stages of language processing, people use prosodic information in word recognition and to predict and construct the syntactic structure of an utterance in their native language (L1) (e.g., Eckstein & Friederici, 2006; Friederich et al., 2004; Isel et al., 2005; Pauker et al., 2011; Steinhauer, 2003; see also Cutler et al., 1997; Wagner & Watson, 2010, for two reviews).

Dr. Christian Burgsmüller is a career EU diplomat currently with the European External Action Service (EEAS), serving as Counselor at the EU Delegation to the U.S. in Washington, D.C. Dr. Burgsmüller studied law in Freiburg i.Br., Geneva and Cologne and worked as a trainee solicitor in Düsseldorf, Brussels, Cologne and Buenos Aires before passing the German Bar Exam in 2000 and subsequently joining the European Commission in Brussels as a career official.

The main One Book One Community event for this year will be the Pittsburgh premier of Snow with writer/director Isaac Ergas and a panel discussion on the Role of Film in Public Health.

Snow is a short, live-action film based on the true story of Dr. John Snow, the father of epidemiology. The panel discussion will include:

Isaac Ergas: Writer/director and public health professional
Carl Kurlander: Writer/producer, University of Pittsburgh Film Studies Program and Steeltown Entertainment Project

Katie Trumpener, Emily Sanford Professor of Comparative Literature and English and director of graduate studies in comparative literature at Yale University

This graduate seminar is in English and open to all graduate students.

Biography – the story of a person’s life – is one of the most popular types of literature today. Yet biography also holds an important place in scholarship. Biographies invite us to consider what effect, if any, an individual may have on the larger course of events. Biographies of creative personalities bring up the further question of whether connections exist between a life and times and an individual’s music, art, or literary works and if so, what those connections might be.