In recent months, Chaikovsky has moved to the center of Russia's politics:
while he continues to exemplify the country's rich cultural heritage, the staunch presence of this avowedly gay composer in the repertory has drawn much attention to the dubiousness of the government's latest anti-gay policies. In this lecture, as I reflect on the renewed Chaikovsky controversy in Russia, I will also trace the roots of the uneasy association between aesthetics and the composer's sexuality to the high Stalinist era. Two antagonistic trajectories took off in the mid-1930s

We welcome all K-12 educators, business and community members to attend all or sections of the symposium for free. The symposium will open with two keynote lectures on Friday evening on an overview of the issues. This will be followed by instructional lectures on Saturday and Sunday on various themes impacting China by experts in the field.

Week-long professional development workshop on global human rights and cultural diversity for faculty from various Midwestern community colleges and small four-year colleges.

A personal journey into the old Jewish heartland – including intensive language study – expands into a larger exploration. How is Lithuania today engaging with the complex history of the Nazi and Soviet eras? Cassedy shines a spotlight on fragile efforts toward mutual understanding, and offers a message of hope.
(See attached flier for more information!)

Minority integration and interethnic relations in Estonia have received a great deal of scholarly attention. The interest in Estonia stems from the conflict potential that existed in the early 1990s, the surprisingly peaceful nature of interethnic relations, and the unprecedented involvement of both European institutions and Russia in shaping minority policies over the past two decades. The talk focuses on the integration of the Russian-speaking minority along structural, cultural, social, and identity dimensions based on the results of regular integration monitoring.

On Thursday, June 20, 2013, Jordan Kuck will give a public talk on the role of Mazpulki, or Latvian 4-H, during the authoritarian period colloquially known as “the Ulmanis Years” (1934-1940). Given that Mazpulki was the single largest youth organization in Latvia, was led by Kārlis Ulmanis himself, and was (and still is) a member of the worldwide 4-H organization sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Cooperative Extension Service, it is surprising that there has not yet been any scholarship on Mazpulki.

Albeit the quantity of people with Estonian ancestry in the United States is not remarkable on a numeric scale – according to the 2000 census, it comprises of merely 25 000 people – it is a very large number both in the context of the global Estonian diaspora as well as the nation as a whole with less than a million representatives altogether. Moreover, the lived reality and corresponding story of Estonians in the United States is still a largely untapped resource in the exploration of ethnicity in America.

A specialist of political and economic issues in Europe and the Middle East, Dr. Woertz manages CIDOB’s partnership with the Moroccan OCP Foundation. Formerly he was a visiting fellow at Princeton University, and Director of Economic Studies of the Gulf Research Center (GRC) in Dubai. He also worked for banks in Germany and the United Arab Emirates, and is a contributor and commentator to international and regional media outlets like the Financial Times, The National, and Al Arabiya.

The first of the EUCE/ESC's Pizza and Politics discussions of the year, GSPIA's EU and the World Organization's executive members talk about their experience interviewing policy-makers, EU civil servants, and visiting major institutions in Brussels and Luxembourg as participants in the EU in Brussels Program, co-sponsored by Pitt's EUCE/ESC and GSPIA. Also learn about getting involved in the EU and the World Organization and about other upcoming EU Studies opportunities at Pitt! PIZZA WILL BE SERVED.

In this lecture, Nancy Scheper-Hughes will discuss the political, economic and moral economies that have transformed the experiences of life and death in the interior of Northeast Brazil, 20 years after the publication of Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil. Her controversial discussion of mother love and child death is one of her most well-known – though least well-understood – theses. She will clarify her argument and explain how a sexual and reproductive revolution came about in the first decade of the 21st century.