Few people know the fascinating history of tea growing and making. This intriguing documentary aims to change that by following renowned tea importer David Lee Hoffman as he scours the far-flung corners of China to find the richest teas on earth. Tea making is an art and tradition that goes back generations in the East, and Hoffman makes it his goal to bring to the rest of the world the exquisite teas produced by struggling small farmers. This film will be accompanies by a tea tasting featuring Chinese teas and dessert after the screening.

While India is perceived as an emerging market, the stories of the plundering of natural resources and the systematic annihilation of the indigenous peoples go unheard. In this race to make India a superpower, and a growing media industry that champions this idea, social inequality has reached its zenith, and easily gets pushed aside. What, then, is the future of the people who grow food with their hands; wo have long been guarding forests and rivers--even before climate change could touch them?

Kurt has written widely about democratization and methodological themes. He also has had a recent article in PS about the tenure process.

*A conversation with poet Martin Espada and historian Marcus Rediker

How movements from below create and use poetry and history.

Pitt Global Brigades and Engineers without Borders present the documentary "FLOW (For the Love of Water): How did a handful of corporations steal our water?" Irena Salina's award-winning documentary investigates what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century - The World Water Crisis. Prefaced by a discussion and presentation by Amizade: Global Service Learning, an NGO based in downtown Pittsburgh implementing international water projects.

Dr. Luckacs will examine new labor subjectivities such as the net idols that became famous by posting their photos and diaries on the web, cell phone novelists whose novels have recently come to dominate literary bestseller lists, and entrepreneurial homemakers who conjure wealth from day trading. The subjects of mass culture theory, digital media theory, work and play, consumer culture, and Japan in the twenty-first century are also topics for discussion.

To register for the event, visit: www.us-japan.org/jasp/events.html

Science, Culture, and the Human after World War II

Our work on this topic seeks to bridge the divide between medieval and early modern studies by taking a long view of three questions surrounding particular uses of vernacular languages and broader processes of vernacularization in this period: How did changes in technologies of communication, such as the rise of letterpress printing, intersect with the uses of vernacular languages? How were the structures of "vernacular theology" transfigured during the period leading up to and following the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation?

From the heads and tails of individual notes to the foreheads and feet of song stanzas, medieval musical writings are replete with body parts. Sometimes the terms are used by convention, or in the service of simple mnemonics. But in other cases, the reasons for acts of musical anthropomorphization are less clear. Tracing the rhetoric of musical animation from the treatises into the realm of musica practica can give us fresh insight into some of the best-known songs of the later middle ages.

Shakespeare's plays Merchant of Venice and Twelfth Night both contain men named Antonio who speak of their love for another male character. Both Antonios remain single at the ends of their plays while both of the men they love marry women. Recent critics often see homosexual desire in the Antonios, and productions today often emphasize their exclusion from the comic community.