*Part of the visit of short-term fellow Dror Wahrman

With responses by Molly Warsh (History) and Adam Shear (Religious Studies).

Yinzling: The University of Pittsburgh Undergraduate Linguistics Club is hosting a Japanese movie night featuring the movie “After Life” (1998, Hirokazu Koreeda), about people who, after death, have just one week to choose one memory to keep for eternity. Snacks and drinks will be provided.

Master's Thesis Defense:

Claudia Fritsche, Ambassador of Liechtenstein to the United States, joined the Office for Foreign Affairs of the Principality of Liechtenstein on June 1st, 1978 and served in a variety of diplomatic functions. Ambassador Fritsche assumed her duties as the first resident Ambassador of Liechtenstein in Washington at the beginning of October 2002 after leaving her post in New York, where she had served as the Permanent Representative of the Principality of Liechtenstein to the United Nations from 1990 to 2002.

Mr. Dimiter Kenarov will present a lecture that focuses on shale gas in Poland and Europe which will be live videoconferenced with the European Union Center of Excellence at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.

“Shale Gas: From Poland to Pennsylvania” – Based upon his new project forthcoming that focuses on a commodity called “a game changer", promoted as a cleaner fossil alternative to coal and oil and cheered as the next step toward the American dream of energy independence. Poland is now Europe's center of shale gas. Like Pennsylvania, it embraces the promises and dangers of extraction. At the center of debate: hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and an associated largely unexplored question of global politics.

As President Obama’s second term commences, the continued vitality of America’s oldest alliance remains critical, as seen by recent speculation about a US-EU free trade agreement. Simultaneously, Europe itself is in the midst of change, as its eastward expanding borders force a reassessment of European and EU identity. Ms. Amy Westling, Deputy Director of the Office of European Union and Regional Affairs, joins us from the US Department of State to discuss the continued importance and current initiatives of the evolving transatlantic partnership.

Although they sell vegetables, milk packets, and cigarettes; owners of small roadside grocery shops in southern India might be described as in the business of time-travel. Shopkeepers’ survival depends on their ability to successfully shift objects and obligations between multiple and conflicting temporal systems. Drawing on recordings of interactions gathered between 2005-08, Brown traces how shopkeepers use refrigeration, accounts of debt, and conversations with customers to negotiate and profit from temporal troubles.

The personal wealth of state office holders and their associates has exploded during the three decades of China’s revived market economy. This is seen in such varied phenomena as the recent reports on the $2.7 billion in assets of Premier Wen Jiabao and family, and the high number and rank of state officials linked to a private firm in the Yuanhua smuggling scandal. How can corruption of this magnitude be explained?

The Institute for International Studies in Education (IISE) is hosting the visit of a distinguished guest, Dr. Yusuf K. Nsubuga. Dr. Nsubuga is the Director of Basic and Secondary Education as well as the HIV/AIDS Education Sector Coordinator of the Uganda Ministry of Education and Sports. He is hugely experienced in HIV/AIDS-related educational issues in Uganda and will deliver a presentation on 30 January 12:00pm – 1:30pm at 5604 WWPH.