On Thursday, March 28, the film Postales de Leningrado / Postcards from Leningrad will be shown in the Frick Fine Arts Auditorium at 6:30 PM. For the young narrator of Postales de Leningrado, being born into a socialist uprising in 1960s Venezuela wasn’t easy. She and her cousin Teo have learned how to live a clandestine life, making an ongoing game out of survival, with everything from code names and creative disguises to making themselves invisible.

On March 24, Sushi: The Global Catch will be screened in the Melwood Screening room at 5:30 PM. In this documentary, director Mark Hall guides us through the fascinating world of the global sushi phenomenon. Purchase tickets at http://www.cmu.edu/faces/#. This film is a part of the Carnegie Mellon International Film Festival.

On March 24, Tahrir: Liberation Square will be screened in the Melwood Screening room at 3:00 PM. Experience the overthrow of a 30-year regime in Stefano Savona’s documentary as he introduces us to young Egyptians in the Square. Purchase tickets at http://www.cmu.edu/faces/#. This film is a part of the Carnegie Mellon International Film Festival.

On March 23, Suspiciously in Love will be screened in the Melwood Screening Room at 5:00 PM. The film follows a shy man named Albert who seeks love online. There, he stumbles upon Basia. She poses as a mysterious woman named Simone and he as a handsome French beau. They maintain the façade until their first date in “real life.” Purchase tickets at http://www.cmu.edu/faces/#. This film is a part of the Carnegie Mellon International Film Festival.

This paper analyzes the 1965 Film Montages of the West German artist Peter Roehr. Roehr’s untitled Film Montages of American and European commercial advertisements utilized an explicitly mechanical aesthetic to remove removed any personal identification, political impetus, or artistic qualities from the montages. Such an extreme disavowal of subjectivity through the cold objective logic of mechanical precision indicated that these montages could, and should, be understood in two other ways: as Roehr’s purposeful self-silencing, and as critiques of commodity fetishization.

All REES faculty, students, and friends are welcome!

The REES Undergraduate Coffee Hour is a new, informal monthly event that will allow undergraduates enrolled in or interested in the REES certificate to interact with one another and share their personal experiences with Russian and East European Studies. This month's topic will be "Favorite Courses within the REES Certificate." We will also be discussing officer positions and the constitution for the REES Undergraduate Student Association.

For more information or to sign up for the REES Coffee Hour mailing list, please contact Alyssa Cypher at alc154@pitt.edu.

Hear about opportunities to teach English or conduct research abroad through the Fulbright U.S. Student Program. Fulbright alumni and current Fulbright participants will join representatives from the university’s National Scholarships advising office to provide information on the Fulbright experience and how to best prepare for it.

Nergis Ertürk is the author of Grammatology and Literary Modernity in Turkey (Oxford University Press, 2011), the recipient of the 2012 MLA Prize for a First Book. In 2008, she won the William Riley Parker Prize for her essay, "Modernity and Its Fallen Languages: Tanpınar's Hasret, Benjamin's Melancholy," which appeared in PMLA. Her article, “Phonocentrism and Literary Modernity in Turkey,” appeared in boundary 2, and her research has also appeared in a wide-ranging collection of prominent literary works.

Katharina Matro’s dissertation and talk focuses on the transformation of the vast estates of Prussia’s nobility into Polish state farms and smaller family farmsteads post-1945 and the defeat of Nazi Germany. Her research forms the argument that the continual assault on both land and property rights during the time determined the fragile postwar economy and society in the region.