Events in UCIS

Thursday, April 8 until Friday, April 8

8:00 am Conference
Georgia Consortium: Exploring the Complexities of Vietnam
Location:
Online via Zoom
Sponsored by:
Asian Studies Center
See Details

Register here.

Friday, April 16

8:30 am Workshop
Global Geopolitics: The United States, Russia, and China After 2020
Location:
Zoom
Sponsored by:
Asian Studies Center and Center for Russian East European and Eurasian Studies
See Details

This is a professional development workshop aimed primarily at faculty and instructors who are interested in teaching on global geopolitics. Participants are encouraged to attend all sessions.

REGISTER: https://pitt.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcqce6rqz4qEtd2CGDgQGiXIQXxb8E7k8...

SCHEDULE

8:30 a. m. (EDT)
Welcome and Program Overview

9:00 a.m. (EDT)
CHINA-RUSSIA-US RELATIONS AND STRATEGIC TRIANGLES: AN INTERVIEW
Dr. Thomas Graham, Distinguished Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations
Dr. Sean Guillory, Curator, Sean's Russia Blog and Podcast

10:15 a.m. (EDT)
Refreshment Break

10:30 a.m. (EDT)
CHINA’S GLOBAL ROLE IN THE XI JINPING ERA: PERSPECTIVES FROM THE ‘BELT AND ROAD’ INITIATIVE
Dr. Matthew Johnson Research Director/Founder and Principal, AltaSilva LLC, Philadelphia

12:00 p.m. (EDT)
Lunch Break

1:00 p. m. (EDT)
RUSSIA, AMERICA, AND THE NEW GLOBAL ORDER: AN INTERVIEW
Dr. Andrei Tsygankov, Professor of Political Science and International Relations, SFSU
Dr. Sean Guillory, Curator, Sean's Russia Blog and Podcast

2:15 p.m. (EDT)
Refreshment Break

2:30 p.m. (EDT)
RULING THE EAST: CHINESE-RUSSIAN ENCOUNTERS ON THE FRONTIERS OF CAPITAL IN CONTEMPORARY VLADIVOSTOK
Joseph Livesey, Doctoral Candidate in Anthropology, NYU

3:45 p.m. (EDT)
Closing Remarks

10:00 am Panel Discussion
Freedom or Fear of Expression? Political Cartooning in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East
Location:
Online
Sponsored by:
Center for African Studies and Center for Russian East European and Eurasian Studies along with Consortium for Education Resources in Islamic Studies; City of Asylum
See Details

Is it getting harder to speak up in both democracies and dictatorships? This forum will explore the role of political cartooning in the development of civil and political freedoms in our times. Please join us for a discussion of cartooning and free speech regulation in Europe, the cartooning experience of the Ghanaian satirical artist Bright Ackwerh, and the strategies of the Iranian government that changed the life of the editorial cartoonist and activist-in-exile Kianoush Ramezani.

MODERATOR:
Oleg Minin is Visiting Assistant Professor of Russian at Bard College. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California. His fields of specialization include the literature, visual, and performing arts of the Russian Silver Age and Russian avant-garde; the satirical press of the Russian fin de siècle; Habermas’s social theory and Bourdieu’s theory of cultural production; and language pedagogy. His work has been published in The Russian Review, Experiment: A Journal of Russian Culture, and Slavic and East European Journal. He is the co-curator of the exhibition Demonocracy: All Hell Breaks Loose in 1905 Russia at the Doheny Memorial Library, USC, and curator of the Ferris Collection of Sovietica at the Institute of Modern Russian Culture. He previously taught at the University of Southern California; California State University, Northridge; Glendale Community College; and University of California, Riverside. At Bard since 2012.

SPEAKERS:
Nives Rumenjak obtained her Ph.D. in History from the University of Zagreb. She is a senior IR Lecturer and Head of the IR Department at Webster University’s Leiden campus. Since 2008, she has been a Center Associate at the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies. Previously, Dr. Rumenjak held a research position at the Croatian Institute of History in Zagreb for eleven years, where she published her most comprehensive book, The Political and Social Elite of Serbs in Croatia at the End of the 19 Century: The Rise and Decline of the SerbianClub. Dr. Rumenjak’s areas of expertise include Central and Southeast European studies, sociohistorical prosopography of elite groups, nationalism, borderland identities, freedom of expression and political cartooning in the modern era. Her recent article, titled "Freedom of expression in multicultural societies: Political cartooning in Europe in the modern and postmodern eras," is published in 2019 in Empedocles: European Journal for the Philosophy of Communication.

Bright Ackwerh, born 1989 is an artist from Ghana. He is a product of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology where he earned a BFA and MFA in painting and sculpture. His practice is situated in the field of painting, illustration and street art. He was the recipient of the Kuenyehia prize for Ghanaian Contemporary Art for 2016, an honor conferred on him by a jury led by Professor Emeritus El Anatsui. Bright’s work had been gaining critical acclaim on social media because of his strategy to question the limited spaces available for displaying his art and for engaging a young art audience in his hometown of Ghana. Bright Ackwerh’s practice has been heavily influenced by the Ghanaian artist duo FOKN BOIS and the work of Nigerian activist and musician Fela Kuti in how they have made social commentary. Mr. Ackwerh’s work has recently been centered on investigating pop culture as a medium which he also explores through public poster making. His work has been shown in group exhibitions in Ghana and abroad including ‘Cornfields in Accra’ in 2016, ‘Orderly Disorderly’ in 2017 and his first solo ‘Where De Cho Dey’ in 2018. He has also been involved in organizing art workshops in the northern region of Ghana in collaboration with some development agencies based in Tamale. Bright is currently studying at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology and continues to make work inspired by global popular culture.

Iranian award-winning editorial cartoonist and activist-in-exile, Kianoush Ramezani lives and works in Europe since 2009. His editorial cartoons appear regularly in French newspapers and media like Courrier International and La Croix, and have also been published in Libération, Arte, We Demain and other international media. A series of Kianoush's original cartoons are part of the collection of Kunstmuseum Solingen in Germany. He received the French award for artistic courage of 2018 in the Angouleme International Comics Festival. He has given educational lectures in high schools, colleges and universities since 2010 in Europe in order to raise awareness about the importance of "the freedom of expression" among the young generation. He chose “Cartooning: The Art of Danger” for his TEDx talk in 2014, months before Charlie Hebdo’s terrorist attack. Kianoush follows international and local societies, educational systems and other art fields like short films, installation and video arts. He has been curating and directing international cartoon exhibitions and awards since 2011 in Europe [France, Sweden, Germany, etc.]. He has been a jury member of Interfilm Berlin [International short film festival] in 2015 and 2016. Kianoush is the co-founder and President of “United Sketches,” an international organization promoting freedom of expression and cartoonists in exile.

10:30 am Reading Group
Emerging Latinx Communities Reading Group
Location:
Zoom
Sponsored by:
Center for Latin American Studies along with Center for Health Equity
See Details

We will be discussing the JAMA "no doctor is racist" issue. As you probably heard, in February JAMA published a podcast to discuss structural racism. The host made "strange" assertions. Sarah Sanders will guide us in a discussion of an article that talks about this, but please feel free to get more info on the topic.

How Whiteness Works: JAMA and the Refusals of White Supremacy, by Clarence, c. Gravlee, Somatosphere, March 27, 2021. http://somatosphere.net/2021/how-whiteness-works.html/

With the support of the Center for Latin American Studies, we explore 1) the problems Latinos in small yet rapidly growing populations face, and 2) how to solve those problems. We hope to get new writing and research collaborations going! Open to all interested: students, faculty, staff, and practitioners from Pitt and beyond. If you want to get extra network time, we will be there 30 minutes before and after the meeting times.

Meeting Passcode: Philadelphia

12:00 pm Lecture Series / Brown Bag
JMintheUS: The demise of the left and growth of rightwing populism in Europe: Foreign policy implications
Location:
Zoom
Sponsored by:
European Studies Center along with Center for European Union, Transatlantic, and Trans-European Space Studies (CEUTTSS) and Virginia Tech
See Details

Please join the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center on Friday, April 16, from 12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. ET for a discussion on the decreased support for leftwing parties and the rise of rightwing populism in Europe. The event– co-sponsored by the Center for European Union, Transatlantic & Trans-European Space Studies (CEUTTSS) at Virginia Tech– will be based on Dr. Maria Snegovaya’s paper How ex-Communist left parties reformed and lost, and will explore the connection between neoliberal economic policies and the rise of rightwing populism in Europe among economically diverse social classes, as well as the foreign policy implications of this trend.
The panel will be moderated by Mr. Ben Haddad, Director, Europe Center, Atlantic Council, and will feature the author of the paper Dr. Maria Snegovaya, Research Fellow, Center for European Union, Transatlantic & Trans-European Space Studies (CEUTTSS) at Virginia Tech. The other three panelists will be Dr. Sheri Berman, Professor of Political Science, Barnard College, Columbia University; Dr. Yascha Mounk, Associate Professor of the Practice of International Affairs, School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University; and Dr. Dalibor Rohac, Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute (AEI).
A Zoom link will be sent to those who register. The event is open to the press and on the record.

Featuring
Dr. Sheri Berman, Professor of Political Science, Barnard College, Columbia University
Dr. Yascha Mounk, Associate Professor of the Practice of International Affairs, School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University
Dr. Dalibor Rohac, Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute (AEI)
Dr. Maria Snegovaya, Research Fellow, Center for European Union, Transatlantic & Trans-European Space Studies (CEUTTSS) A Jean Monnet Center of Excellence, Virginia Tech; Nonresident Fellow, Eurasia Center, Atlantic Council
Moderated by
Mr. Ben Haddad, Director, Europe Center, Atlantic Council

#JMintheUS

1:00 pm Cultural Event
Russian Language Tutoring
Location:
Online
Sponsored by:
Center for Russian East European and Eurasian Studies
See Details

Russian tutoring available for students by appointment.

Book your appointment here: https://calendly.com/katya-kovaleva/russian-language-tutoring

3:00 pm Student Club Activity
German Club Meeting
Location:
Zoom
Sponsored by:
Global Hub along with Pitt German Club
See Details

Join the Pitt German Club every Friday at 3PM to practice your German language skills and learn about different aspects of German culture!

Zoom ID: 950 0542 1812

4:15 pm Colloquium
Flora Fauna and Food: The Impact of the Columbian Exchange
Location:
Zoom
Sponsored by:
Center for Latin American Studies
See Details

The Columbian Exchange is categorized as the movement of life in both directions across the Atlantic—from Eurasia and Africa to the Americas and vice versa. Whether discussing horses in the Americas or chili peppers in Asia, introductions to new flora and fauna during the 15th and 16th centuries on these continents gave way to drastic changes in environment, resulting in changes in ways of life. How did these lifestyle changes translate to agriculture and food culture?

5:00 pm Cultural Event
Women's Voices in Hip Hop
Location:
Zoom
Sponsored by:
Global Hub along with Department of Africana Studies, Center for Creativity, Gender Sexuality & Women's Studies Program, Office of Diversity & Inclusion and Graduate and Professional Student Government
See Details

Join Adderse+Poesia for a live performance and conversation with Brazilian Hip Hop artists Rapper Azul and Tulipa Negra mediated by Mano Raul! Friday, April 16, 2021 at 5 pm EST on Zoom https://pitt.zoom.us/j/155705376

We will also be live on Facebook @addversepoesia

The event is a follow-up conversation started on Feb 26 about Brazilian Hip Hop Music and Poetry with Professor and Poet Paulo Dutra.

This event is made possible by our generous sponsors:
Department of Africana Studies; Afro-Latin American and Afro-Latinx Studies Initiative; Center for Creativity; Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies Program; Graduate and Professional Student Government; Global Hub; Office for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.

6:00 pm Workshop
Faces of Muhammad: Western Perceptions of the Prophet Of Islam from the Middle Ages To Today
Location:
Virtual - Register Online!
Sponsored by:
Global Studies Center along with Consortium for Educational Resources on Islamic Studies (CERIS)
See Details

You are invited to participate in the Spring 2021 book discussion with Dr. Patrick Hughes (Religious Studies, University of Pittsburgh). John V. Tolan’s book Faces of Muhammad explores the many and various ways that Europeans (and Americans) have understood, portrayed, and interpreted the life and legacy of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam. The strength of Tolan’s book is that it shows both the negative and the positive ways that Westerners have viewed Muhammad at different times and in different contexts—from those who showed outright hostility, to others who used Muhammad for their own polemical purposes, to those who viewed him with grudging respect or outright admiration.