As part of our Year of Memory and Politics and 1989 Series, the ESC, in cooperation with REEES, is pleased to welcome Maria Todorova as a Jean Monnet Center of Excellence speaker. Based on her forthcoming book on the perceived “golden age” of the socialist idea, Dr. Todorova will present the results of her research into a rich prosopographical database of circa 3500 biographies of people born in the 19th century.

In cooperation with the Department of German’s German Campus Weeks programming, and as a part of the University Center for International Studies Global 1989 Series, this month’s Conversation will discuss the legacies of the two Germanies that existed between 1949 and 1990.  Thirty years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, do differences between east and west still persist in Germany?

To participate remotely, contact irm24@pitt.edu.

Join us for a screening (with English subtitles)and discussion led by film expert Stephen Brockmann (Carnegie Mellon University). Goodbye, Lenin! (2003) was directed by Wolfgang Becker. In this comedy/drama, a dedicated young man, Alex (Daniel Brühl), recreates East Germany in their 77m2 apartment to protect his socialist mother Christiane (Katrin Sass) from the shock of the fall of the Berlin Wall! Can he pull off this elaborate scheme knowing that the slightest shock could prove fatal? Alex strives to keep the fall of the GDR a secret for as long as possible.

From 1949 to 1989, the Soviet Union conducted 456 nuclear tests at Semipalatinsk nuclear test site in Kazakhstan. Despite decades of nuclear fallout, Kazakh rural communities inhabit the area around the site. How has living around a nuclear test site shaped those communities and their post-Soviet experience? This live interview with Magdalena Stawkowski will discuss her ethnographic work and the ways the Semipalatinsk test site still shapes economy, environment and subjectivities.

Join the Global Studies Center for our annual welcome reception! Meet current and new students, faculty and staff and learn about GSC initiatives while enjoying conversation and refreshments.

On the eve of the Pittsburgh Global Town Hall hosted by the University of Pittsburgh, Global Voice, World Workable Trust, and the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the University Center for International Studies will host a workshop and town hall discussion specifically for area middle and high school students. The goal is to focus on the concerns of the next generation of globally-minded citizens, while exploring avenues for climate activism. How do you turn local activism into global reform? What role do the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) play in these discussions?

The Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (REEES) and the Study Abroad Office (SAO) in collaboration with the Pittsburgh-based global service-learning organization Amizade propose to bring together community organizers and nonprofit leaders with University of Pittsburgh faculty and students for a public forum themed “Water Is Life." The thematic concentration on water reflects the contemporary significance of the topic, which invites inquiry from a regional and global perspective. Water is at the core of human and environmental existence.

The European Studies Center, the Global Studies Center, and the University Center for International Studies, with the support of the Office of the Provost and the Year of Pitt Global Initiative at the University of Pittsburgh, in partnership with Global Voice and the Workable World Trust, will host the Second Annual Global Town Hall Meeting on UN and Global Governance Reform on Thursday 19 September to Friday 20 September 2019.

The theme for the discussion will be “Climate, Gender, and Sustainable Development: Local to Global”.

Guest speakers Sarah Markwardt from UPMC, Sandhya Subramanian from Deloitte Consulting, and Sarah Sullivan from The Task Force for Global Health Inc., will provide their expertise, knowledge, and advice. Our panelists will discuss their pathways in achieving a career in global health and what you can do right now as a student.

Andrea Micu received a PhD in Performance Studies from Northwestern University in June 2018, MA in Performance Studies from Texas A&M, 2012 and BA in Communication Studies and Journalism from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid in 2008. Her teaching interests are in Urban Studies: urban anthropology, neoliberalism and urban geography; squatting and countercultural urban movements; arts development, Critical/cultural Studies; Aesthetics and politics, new materialisms; and Performance Studies: critical ethnography, performance and activism; political economies of performance.