Register here.
Events in UCIS
Thursday, April 8 until Friday, April 8
Sunday, October 24 until Tuesday, November 30
Please join us for a virtual event created by the Welsh, Scottish and Irish Rooms as they showcase unique aspects of their culture. Enjoy a brief Powerpoint presentation of each room and pre-recorded videos exclusively made for this event on each culture's history, art, music, poetry, dance and more?
Friday, October 29 until Wednesday, November 3
Come and learn about the Day of the Saints and how to set up an Alter/Ofrenda. The Alter/Ofrenda will be displayed in the Global Hub through November 3.
Everyone is welcome to bring photos of the dearly departed you wish to honor, along with ofrendas, mementos and artificial flowers to embellish the alter for those who are no longer among us.
The Alter/Ofrenda will be built by Lisa DiGioia Nutini, Owner of Mexico Lindo and Mexican Folk-Art Dealer.
Monday, November 1
Presented by The Matthew B. Ridgway Center and The Center for Governance and Markets. The event will also be livestreamed on Youtube – please check the Center for Governance and Market's twitter account on the day of the event to watch remotely.
After State Collapse: Afghanistan Following the Taliban’s Return to Power
William Pitt Union – Lower Level Room
November 1, 2021
1:30pm
Speakers:
Jennifer Murtazashvili – Director, Center for Governance and Markets
Michael Kenney – Director, Matthew B. Ridgway Center
Akram Umarov – Senior Research Fellow, University of World Economy and Diplomacy (Uzbekistan), and Fulbright Scholar with the Center for Governance and Markets
James Pickett – Associate Professor, Department of History
Ahmad Idrees Rahmani – Independent Analyst and Afghanistan Policy Expert
Moderated by: Haider Ala Hamoudi – Professor and Vice Dean, School of Law
Following the South Korean government’s drive in the 1990s for globalization and deregulation of higher education, Korean universities aggressively recruited Chinese students as both symbolic and economic resources. The number of Chinese students studying at Korean universities consequently increased 57-fold between 2000 and 2019 (from 1,200 to 68,537). This presentation will share the findings from interviews with some of these Chinese students, who chose South Korea with academic and cultural aspirations but often found that neither Korean students nor the university itself welcomed them into classes or communities. As a result, Chinese students have not adapted to Korean university in the ways imagined by the normative framework, but instead make their study-abroad experience livable by constituting material, technological, and imagined modalities of belonging. These modalities of “belonging otherwise” reveal South Korea as a node of commercialized, non-elite, inter-Asian student mobility, and illuminate Chinese students’ strategies in this new regime of study abroad.
Jiyeon Kang is an Associate Professor of Communication Studies and Korean Studies at the University of Iowa. Her research interests are youth culture, student mobility, and digital technologies in both South Korea and the U.S., with a focus on the communicative dynamics and cultural norms emerging in internet and campus communities. Her first monograph, Igniting the Internet: Youth and Activism in Postauthoritarian South Korea, examines the emergence of internet-born candlelight protests as a movement repertoire in South Korea and studies popular political dynamics in the postauthoritarian, highly networked nation. Her current project on Chinese international students in the U.S. and South Korea explores “belonging” online and in campus communities, referring not simply to a sense of attachment but to transforming social and ethical modes of survival and adaptation in inhospitable environments. Her research has appeared in journals in Asian studies, communication studies, and globalization.
To register, click here
Join Brazil Nuts for their weekly Portuguese conversation hour at all levels!
Join members of the French Club to and have casual conversation in French! All levels welcome.
Tuesday, November 2
Join the European Studies Center for an information session on student funding available at ESC. There will be two opportunities to attend a session.
In-person at the Global Hub in Posvar Hall:
Tuesday, November 2nd.
Graduate Students: 11:30am-12:15pm
Undergraduate Students: 12:30pm-1:15pm
Virtually via Zoom:
Monday, November 8th.
Graduate Students: 2:30-3:15pm
Undergraduate Students: 3:30-4:15pm
Stop by and learn about earning a graduate certificate with Pitt's University Center for International Studies (UCIS). Tailor a program of study based on your career interests that will enhance your GSPIA degree. Don't let this no cost opportunity pass. Center advisors will be available to discuss certificates, funding, resources, and more!
Join the Chinese Language & Culture Club for their biweekly meetings where we will build our Chinese language skills and participate in fun cultural activities!
Wednesday, November 3
What made Soviet people "soviet"? This question has dogged scholars for decades. But one innovative approach to digging into the "soviet" of Soviet life is through material objects and spaces during the late socialist era. Soviet things influenced Soviet people's gender roles, habitual choices, social trajectories, and imaginary aspirations. And, in turn, Soviet people used objects to shape their sense of self as part of a global experience of modernity that went beyond communist propaganda. How did objects make Soviet people and society "Soviet"? This live interview with Alexey Golubev will ponder this elusive question.
Register via Zoom: https://pitt.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_dokkOr_GSTCXOf5nZPYfvg
Join Pitt’s World History Center on Wednesday November 3 at 12:00 pm for a virtual roundtable about peripheral, contested, and extractive geographies in the Ottoman and post-Ottoman Empire, moderated by University of Pittsburgh professor Gregor Thum. The roundtable features: Ana Fumurescu (Graduate Student Fellow, World History Center), Ari Şekeryan (Research Affiliate, World History Center) and Ana Sekulić, Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (REEES) Postdoctoral Fellow.
The roundtable participants will discuss their current research and how it relates to Ottoman and post-Ottoman spaces. A discussion will follow about the concept of Ottoman/post-Ottoman space and the degree to which it is a useful concept to make sense of the space and its societies.
This event is part of a series titled "The Limits of Networks in World History: Peripheries and Beyond." Please see the attached PDF for more information about the series.
Register here: https://pitt.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0lfuivpzgjGd3s-BTtLBVTNCshoMK8vdbO
Join the German Department for Laber Rhabarber, a weekly German conversation hour that is open to all!
Join the newest visiting lecturer from the Africana Studies Department, Dr. Gamby Camara, for a conversation about the links between the New Negro Movement of Harlem, the Négritude Movement of Paris, and today's authors and filmmakers of African descent, like Ryan Coogler and Ava DuVernay, who use art and literature for social change.
A weekly conversation table for people interested in German culture and language, all proficiency levels are welcome!
Spanish conversation at all levels
The Great Exodus examines one of the least understood forced migrations in modern East Asia—the human exodus from China to Taiwan following the Nationalist collapse and Chinese Communist victory in 1949. Peeling back layers of Cold War ideological constructs on the subject, the book tells a very different story from the conventional historiography.
Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang (楊孟軒) is Associate Professor of East Asian History in Department of History, University of Missouri-Columbia. Dominic completed his PhD in Department of History, University of British Columbia (2012). He has been a recipient of multiple SSHRC awards (Canada) and Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation grants, as well as the Taiwan Fellowship. His first book The Great Exodus from China won the Memory Studies Association First Book Award in 2020, and in 2021, was selected as a Finalist for the International Book Award in the category of History: General. For his research, Dominic also received University of Missouri Provost’s Outstanding Junior Faculty Research and Creative Activities Award in 2020. To register, click here
Thursday, November 4
This workshop series is aimed at Pitt staff, faculty, and students working in international education or who hope to work in international organizations and who want to learn more about engaging audiences through social media. In this session, the focus is on creating a successful social media strategy that supports the mission, vision, and goals of an organization that has a global and international focus.
Rose Kouwenhoven, s a digital communications expert specialized in digital marketing, branding, and web optimization for international organizations.
A part of the Demystifying Social Media for International Education and Engagement series.
Cultura Negra no Atlantico (CULTNA) é uma iniciativa que congrega o Laboratório de História Oral e Imagem (LABHOI) da Universidade Federal Fluminense e da Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, e o Center for Latin American Studies da University of Pittsburgh. Uma vez por mês, trabalhos recentes serão debatidos com especialistas e estudantes interessados no tema. As discussões serão realizadas em português. Neste encontro, serão discutidos os capitulos 3 e 6 do livro "História Social da Beleza Negra", de Giovana Xavier, com a própria autora. Evento em português. O evento será às 18:00 horas em São Paulo e às 17:00 horas em Pittsburgh.
Join the Persian Language Table every other Thursday at the Global Hub!
Friday, November 5 until Sunday, November 7
In 1928, a group of energized students at the University of Pittsburgh, answered the call of Mrs. Ruth Crawford Mitchell and stepped up to accept the challenge of creating the Greek Nationality Room. They enlisted regional immigrants of Greek descent, some in position of leadership of the then young – but so energetic – Greek community, to join them in this challenge. Over the next 15 years, the students, all who eventually graduated and began successful careers, were able to dedicate the Greek Nationality Room in 1941, 80 years ago.
Friday, November 5
Stop by the Global Hub and taste some treats in honor of Diwali! Diwali is a festival of lights and is one of the largest celebrations for Hindus, Jains, Sikhs, and Buddhists around the world.
This film symposium will contribute to a broader understanding of sexual normativity in Russia, whether our working understanding of that category operates with a notion of “queer” as endlessly fluid or whether it is identified with fixed boundaries across historical breakpoints. Join us for the screening of two films and follow-up discussions with filmmakers and scholars on three questions. We will explore how our understanding of queer theory is rooted in definitions within contemporary US culture, ask whether queerness lends itself to a transregional definition, and consider what Russian queer cinema can reveal about unacknowledged Anglo-American assumptions.
Friday, 5 November, 1 PM EST
The Man Who Surprised Everyone (Russia, 2018, dir. Natasha Merkulova and Aleksei Chupov)
Introducer:
Stasia Korotkova, Founder, Queer Screen
Discussants:
Todd W. Reeser, Chair, Department of French and Italian, University of Pittsburgh
Dan Healey, Professor of Modern Russian History, University of Oxford
The Global Studies Center, Center for Global Health and the Center for BioEthics and Health Law will host Pitt’s 2nd annual Global Health Case Competition. Graduate and undergraduate students team up to address a global health scenario and present to a panel of experts.
Join the Panoramas team for their next roundtable on Friday, November 5 @ 3:15 PM EST. This event will be held over Zoom and is open to all. OCC Credit will be offered!
Panoramas intern Nadiyah Fisher will discuss mental health in Haiti.
Read Nadiyah's article: https://www.panoramas.pitt.edu/health-and-society/religion-healthcare-an...
Addverse+Poesia is a transnational and multilingual student organization dedicated to celebrating Black/Indigenous and LGBTQIA+ writers, poets, etc. Join us for your weekly meetings on Fridays from 4:30-6PM!
Saturday, November 6
This film symposium will contribute to a broader understanding of sexual normativity in Russia, whether our working understanding of that category operates with a notion of “queer” as endlessly fluid or whether it is identified with fixed boundaries across historical breakpoints. Join us for the screening of two films and follow-up discussions with filmmakers and scholars on three questions. We will explore how our understanding of queer theory is rooted in definitions within contemporary US culture, ask whether queerness lends itself to a transregional definition, and consider what Russian queer cinema can reveal about unacknowledged Anglo-American assumptions.
Saturday, 6 November, 1 PM EST
Come On, Scumbags (Kazakhstan, 2013, dir. Madina Mustafina)
Introducer:
Madina Mustafina, Director and Cinematographer
Discussants:
Frank G. Karioris, Faculty, The Branson School
Nick Davis, Associate Professor of English, Northwestern University
Monday, November 8
Join the European Studies Center for an information session on student funding available at ESC. There will be two opportunities to attend a session.
In-person at the Global Hub in Posvar Hall:
Tuesday, November 2nd.
Graduate Students: 11:30am-12:15pm
Undergraduate Students: 12:30pm-1:15pm
Virtually via Zoom:
Monday, November 8th.
Graduate Students: 2:30-3:15pm
Undergraduate Students: 3:30-4:15pm
When in 1949 the Chinese Communist Party “liberated” the ethnocultural frontier region known to Tibetans as Amdo, its goal was not just to construct a state, but to create a nation—not just control, but transformation. While state building might have been accomplished through coercion, Party leaders understood that nation making required narratives and policies capable of convincing Amdo’s diverse inhabitants of their communion with a wider political community. Rather than immediately implement socialist reforms, the CCP initially pursued relatively moderate “United Front” policies meant to “gradually” and “organically” persuade Tibetans and Amdo’s other non-Han inhabitants of their membership in the new multiethnic nation. At the outset of 1958’s Great Leap Forward, however, United Front gradualism was jettisoned in favor of rapid collectivization. This led to large-scale rebellion, overwhelming state repression, and widespread famine. Rather than a “voluntary” and “peaceful” transformation, Amdo was incorporated through the inordinate and often indiscriminate deployment of state violence. In this talk, Benno Weiner discusses the Communist Party’s United Front strategy in Amdo, the 1958 Amdo Rebellion, and ways in which the violence of 1958 and its aftermath continue to cloud efforts to integrate Tibetans and others into the modern Chinese nation-state.
Benno Weiner is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Carnegie Mellon University. He is author of the Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier (Cornell UP) and co-editor of Contested Memories: Tibetan History under Mao Retold (Brill).
To register, click here.
Join Brazil Nuts for their weekly Portuguese conversation hour at all levels!
Join members of the French Club to and have casual conversation in French! All levels welcome.
Tuesday, November 9 until Thursday, November 11
Lia García (Mexico City, 1991) is a Mexico City-based performance artist, activist, and educator whose work has been featured at the Annual Encuentro of the Hemispheric Institute of Politics and Performance at NYU, Harvard University, and the University of Texas at Austin, among other universities and cultural centers across the Americas and Europe. Her work incorporates transfeminist critical pedagogies, trans*ness, activism through her method of encuentros afectivos, affective encounters.
SEMINARS COUNT AS A ONE CREDIT COURSE FOR PITT STUDENTS
Session 1: Tuesday, November 9th; 1 pm - 4 pm
Unlearning to Touch: Vulnerability as a Radical Pedagogy
Session 2: Wednesday, November 10th; 1 pm - 4 pm
Trans Touch: Performance, Unbecoming, and RadicalTransfeminist Praxis
Session 3: Thursday, November 11th; 1 pm - 4 pm
Trans Poetics in Action: Radical Interventions, Counter Publics
WORKSHOPS: Trans Performance in the Americas
Tuesday, November 9th & Thursday, November 11th
4 pm - 5:15 pm, 121 Cathedral of Learning
Tuesday, November 9
Through experiential learning, high school students engage directly with global issues by assuming the role of world leaders and negotiating responses to timely topics.
After the end of the wars in former Yugoslavia, the European Union and the United States committed to stabilizing the Balkans and providing a pathway for accession to key institutions like the EU and NATO. Yet this process has stalled in recent years, with the Balkans also experiencing greater interference from outside powers including Russia and China. The future enlargement of NATO and the commitment of the US and the EU to the Balkans appear more uncertain than they did 20 years ago. H.E. Tone Kajzer, Slovenia’s ambassador to the United States and H.E. Bojan Vujić, Bosnia's and Herzegovina’s ambassador to the United States, will discuss these subjects and more during a virtual conversation. SIS professor Mirjana Morosini will moderate the discussion, followed by a Q&A with the audience.
Registrants will receive reminder emails containing the Zoom webinar link.
Biographies
H.E. Tone Kajzer is the ambassador of Slovenia to the United States. He embarked on his diplomatic career by joining the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the beginning of 1995. In 2008, he was appointed ambassador of the Republic of Slovenia to the Republic of Finland and to the Republic of Estonia. Following his return from Finland in 2012, he was appointed State Secretary at the Office of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Slovenia, engaging mostly with foreign policy and foreign economic issues. From 2013 to 2018, he served as ambassador of the Republic of Slovenia to the Kingdom of Denmark. In 2020, he returned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as the state secretary at the Ministry.
H.E. Bojan Vujic is the ambassador of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the United States. Prior to his diplomatic career, he had a successful career as a professional tennis player, competing in the Davis Cup for both the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. He became ambassador to the United States in September 2019.
Mirjana Morosini (moderator) is a professor at SIS and an historian of modern Europe, with particular emphases on Germany and broader Central Europe, the Balkans, Italy, and modern European imperial overseas possessions. Her work focuses on comparative and transnational history of ethnic politics, ethnic conflict and genocide, nationalism, borderland identities, and the history of science and technology.
This event is co-sponsored by the Transatlantic Policy Center.
MARTHA LEIGH AND AMY COLIN RETELL THE INCREDIBLE STORIES OF THEIR PARENTS AND RELATIVES DURING WORLD WAR II.
ABOUT MARTHA LEIGH
Martha grew up in Cambridge, UK. Having first gained a degree in English Literature, she later studied medicine and trained as a physician, working as a General Practitioner in the East End of London for 30 years. Her first book, Couldn’t afford the eels. Memories of Wapping 1900 —1960 was published in 2008. Her book
Invisible Ink (published in 2021) vivifies the fascinating story of her mother who escaped the Holocaust and her uncle and aunt who fought in the French resistance. Martha lives in London with her husband.
ABOUT AMY COLIN
Amy (PhD, Yale), President of the international research organization City for the Cultures of Peace, holds a tenured professorship in German at the University of Pittsburgh since 1989. She held teaching and/or research appointments at Yale, Univ. of Washington (Seattle), Cornell, Harvard, Cambridge, Tübingen, FU-Berlin, and Paris 7- Denis Diderot. Her publications include: Paul Celan Holograms of Darkness (1991), the co-authored and co-edited volumes Paul Celan - Edith Silbermann (2010) and Edith Silbermann: Czernowitz –Stadt der Dichter (2015).
Event organized by the Department of German and the Jewish Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh in cooperation with the City of Cultures of Peace.
In memory of Edith Silbermann's 100th Birthday. Organized in conjuction with Prof. Dr. Amy-Diana Colin's German Studies Seminars at the University of Pittsburgh.
http://www.german.pitt.edu/event/annual-commemoration-kristallnacht-stor...
Street Medicine and Health Organization
November 9th, 6pm-7pm, Virtual Format
Emily Delp, M.D.
Family Medicine Resident Physician at Medstar Health/Georgetown-Washington Hospital Center, Co-Creator of Street Health DC, Inc.
Dr. Emily Delp, a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, will discuss the creation of her nonprofit organization providing health resources to persons experiencing unsheltered homelessness in DC. She will also discuss her experiences of serving refugee populations, providing street medicine, and addressing health policy initiatives.
To Register:
https://pitt.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcucuquqz0pHNa_VVMC5qIwqm3kUG9zF83C
Sponsored by: Asian Studies Center, Center for African Studies, Center for Latin American Studies, Center for Russian, East European, & Eurasian Studies, European Studies Center, and Global Studies Center
Wednesday, November 10
The Creating Europe Speaker Series is a two-year project funded by a Jean Monnet Project grant from the European Commission and part of a larger initiative to reimagine European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. The series will explore ideas of Europe from Late Antiquity to the contemporary period and consider ways in which processes of “integration” and “disintegration” have been at work in Europe for much of its history.
In this first session, Professor Klein will join Pitt Professors Shirin Fozi (History of Art and Architecture) and James Picket (History) for a discussion of his work and how it informs our understanding of Europe in the Medieval period.
Place: Posvar 4130 – masks required, University of Pittsburgh campus community members only
*For those who cannot attend in person, the event will be livestreamed.
This panel is designed for students and alumni who want to work with/for European businesses.
European businesses experts will speak about their own experiences, and they will advise students about a successful career in European business and trends in the European market.
PANELISTS:
Jimmy Benaudis
Partner EY France
Global Head - French Business Network
Ernst & Young
Marcus A. Haderlein
Chief Operating Officer
Nobilia North America Inc.
Dania Maccaferri
C.E.O.
Beghelli North America
Juan Carlos Pereira
Executive Director
Spain-US Chamber of Commerce
MODERATOR:
Paul Griebel
Executive Director
World Strategic Forum
International Economic Forum of the Americas
Join the German Department for Laber Rhabarber, a weekly German conversation hour that is open to all!
A weekly conversation table for people interested in German culture and language, all proficiency levels are welcome!
Thursday, November 11
The 1960s and 1970s were a boon for Soviet film. After decades of fits and starts film production. Moviegoers flocked to the theaters. True, Soviet filmmakers leapt over hurdles to make art in an authoritarian society. But while the Brezhnev era of Soviet filmmaking is often depicted as a period of great repression, the films out of the prestigious Lenfilm studio were far more imaginative than assumed. How did a new generation of Soviet filmmakers reconcile contradictory demands to make sophisticated and highly original movies? This live interview with Catriona Kelly will discuss the history of the Lenfilm Studio and its striking oeuvre in the 1970s.
Register via Zoom: https://pitt.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_U_43USetSvewu9iugQ0B7Q
This four-week, accelerated summer program provides students with the opportunity to study human rights and focus on the specific area of wrongful conviction. This program is composed of two courses and includes opportunities to observe trials and visit London-based organizations working in human rights and on behalf of the wrongfully accused.
You will be taught by a law professor who has spent their career litigating wrongful conviction cases and directing the California Innocence Project. The program is designed to provide you with an overview of the issues and case law related to wrongful convictions through the use of interactive exercises, lectures, readings, videos, and case studies.
Learn more by registering for our information session at https://bit.ly/3BlCPa0 or visit globalexperiences.pitt.edu/wrongfulconviction
There are countless ways to tell a story, whether that's through writing, speaking, painting, weaving, music, and more. And all of us have a unique story to tell.
The Center for Creativity and University Center for International Studies invite students to participate in our What's Your Story? series, which consists of workshops on different storytelling methods that can help you share your unique identity, history, and ideas. Both domestic and international students are encouraged to attend!
This workshop will cover basic approaches to narrative storytelling through the medium of podcasts. Attention will be given to exploring what kinds of stories attendees would like to tell. The crux of the workshop will be spent listening to examples of stories, uncovering what makes them work, and how to create an audio narrative that works for you and your specific audience.
This workshop will not cover specific instructions on recording devices, how to use audio editing software, or what platforms to use for publishing podcasts. There will be time at the end of the workshop for Q&A in which attendees may ask questions regarding this information.
Facilitator: christina ong (she/her)
christina is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh currently studying how political activism and artistic production around anti-imperialism, anti-racism, and anti-sexism influenced the development of Asian America in the 1970s-1980s through an in-depth case study of New York City’s the Basement Workshop.
When she is not working on her graduate studies, you can find her writing screenplays and producing her podcast, Seats At The Table. You can also listen to her episode "Marie Kondo and the Security of Stuff" on Asian Americana here: http://www.asianamericana.com/podcast/2020/3/26/010-what-we-inherit-mari...
Cultura Negra no Atlantico (CULTNA) é uma iniciativa que congrega o Laboratório de História Oral e Imagem (LABHOI) da Universidade Federal Fluminense e da Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, e o Center for Latin American Studies da University of Pittsburgh. Uma vez por mês, trabalhos recentes serão debatidos com especialistas e estudantes interessados no tema. As discussões serão realizadas em português. Neste encontro, será discutido um capítulo do livro "As Vozes da Raça: seleções dos jornais negros da America Latina", com George Reid Andrews, Paulina Alberto e Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof, com os próprios autores. Evento em português. O evento será às 18:00 horas em São Paulo e às 16:00 horas em Pittsburgh.
Olga Baranova, Senior Director of the Moscow Community Centre for LGBT+ Initiatives, will speak on the challenges LGBT+ communities face in Russia and the North Caucasus while exploring how Moscow is a conduit for refugees seeking safety and asylum and also a place under increased state surveillance. Now based in New York, Ms. Baranova is a Russian human rights activist. Her work has been featured in the 2020 award-winning documentary Welcome to Chechnya! Inside the Russian Republic's Deadly War on Gays directed by the American filmmaker David France.
This special event is a collaboration between Carnegie Mellon's Environmental Humanities Research Seminar and the CMU Humanities Center’s current initiative on Climate Justice. Michael Goodhart and Ruth Mostern will discuss the Anthropocene: Epoch of Loss initiative that was sponsored by the Global Studies Center, Pitt's World History Center, and the Provost's Year of Creativity. Access a brief background text here.
Join the Pitt French Club and practice your French language skills!
Dr. Burges is the principal investigator on Mediate, a platform for the digital annotation of audiovisual and time-based media with cross-disciplinary applications. His primary collaborators on Mediate are Emily Sherwood,Director of the Digital Scholarship Lab and Studio X at the University of Rochester, and Joshua Romphf, the head programmer of the Digital Scholarship Lab at theUniversity of Rochester. Burges is the author of Out of Sync & Out of Work: History and the Obsolescence of Labor in Contemporary Culture(Rutgers UP, 2018) and co-editor, with Amy J. Elias, ofTime: A Vocabulary of the Present (NYU Press, 2016).His current work includes Television and the Work ofWriting (which explores writing for television as both economic labor and aesthetic craft – as work and form –from Rod Serling, Carl Reiner, William Greaves, and Tina Fey to Michaela Coel, Mindy Kaling, Jill Soloway, and Matthew Weiner) and Late Bourgeois Unities, a more experimental investigation of affect, form, and subjectivity in a time of class morbidity and economic stagnation. His writing has appeared in New German Critique, Post45,Digital Humanities Quarterly, and Cinema Journal. To register for this lecture, click here.
Brazil, 2020 | Documentary
Southern Sorceresses follows a group of LGBTQIA+ performers amidst artistic interventions in downtown São Paulo. Their actions trigger debates on social inequalities, discriminations, and marginalized lives permeated by the struggles of the black, indigenous, and urban occupation movements. With a hybrid form in continuous construction, the film focuses less on a pursuit for answers and rather in collective dialogue as a method and purpose. Going beyond the circumscription of identity flags, the film becomes infused by the uncontrollable spark of life erupting from the gesture of taking to the streets.
The Irish Club at Pitt meets every two weeks during the semester to share Irish culture and language.
Join the European Studies Center at Pitt for a Virtual Book Club to explore recent works by European authors. We will be reading "Anxious People" by Fredrik Backman and discussing the book Thursday, November 11. Those who RSVP by 9/30 can receive a free copy of the book. This event is open to all.
Friday, November 12
Mediate is a collaborative time-based media annotation tool developed by River Campus Libraries and Joel Burges, Director of theGraduate Program in Visual and Cultural Studies at University of Rochester .Media literacy is one of the most pressing concerns for research and teaching due to the centrality of multi-modal content—images, sounds, and text—in our culture. From film and television to video games, music videos, social media, music, and podcasts, multimodal content is ubiquitous in our everyday lives. Yet education still focuses primarily on text-based literacies.Mediate, a web-based platform that allows users to annotate multimedia content, tackles this problem by providing a means for individual or collective inquiry into time-based media. Users can upload video or audio, generate automated markers, annotate their content on the basis of customizable schema, produce real-time notes, and export their data to generate visualizations. To register for this workshop, click to here.
A Symposium in Honor of Dr. Irina Livezeanu
This unique event brings together former students, colleagues, and associates of Irina Livezeanu’s, many of them specialists in the history, art, and culture of Romanian Jews or Romanian fascism, to discuss Jewish lives, creativity, and persecution during the Holocaust, and the memory of these earlier times. Held to celebrate Irina Livezeanu's retirement from the University of Pittsburgh, "Image and Memory: Jews, Antisemitism, and the Holocaust in Romania" deals with major themes that have occupied her writing and teaching over several decades. The event involves four roundtables that are open to the public. The first roundtable uses images and interviews to investigate Jewish lives before and after the Holocaust; the second—artwork and writings by Jewish members of Romania's twentieth century avant-garde movements; the third—propaganda photographs of Romanian fascists and the Holocaust; the fourth is a screening and discussion of director Radu Jude's 2018 feature film, "I do not care if we go down in history as barbarians," which deals with how contemporary Romanians remember the role of Romania’s Nazi-allied government in World War II.
Announced by European Studies Center.
Dr. Jamie Booth, from Social Work, will be discussing her work with an innovative method, Visual Voices. The article is: The role of bilingualism in Latino youth experiences of acculturation stress when living in an emerging Latino community. Booth, J, Huerta C, and Thomas, B. Qualitative Social Work29(4): 1069-1077, 2021.
Sponsored by 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 time.
This special event is a collaboration between Carnegie Mellon's Environmental Humanities Research Seminar and the CMU Humanities Center’s current initiative on Climate Justice. Michael Goodhart and Ruth Mostern will discuss the Anthropocene: Epoch of Loss initiative that was sponsored by the Global Studies Center, Pitt's World History Center, and the Provost's Year of Creativity. Access the corresponding paper here. There is also an appendix, available here.
Addverse+Poesia is a transnational and multilingual student organization dedicated to celebrating Black/Indigenous and LGBTQIA+ writers, poets, etc. Join us for your weekly meetings on Fridays from 4:30-6PM!
Saturday, November 13
Join us for a live discussion with actress Ioana Flora (Fragile) and directors Oana Tenter (The Pastor's Women), Ioana Mischie (Fragile) and Oana Giurgiu (Occasional Spies), moderated by Alina Haliliuc.
Register HERE: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAvcuCtrzgoHN32pxpfrbkWvN-zYM1...
This event centers on Romanian women directors, actresses and scholars, and their reflections on the current state of Romanian film and its future. What kind of stories still need to be told through film, and by whom?
About Our Special Guests:
Oana Giurgiu- director:
Graduate in Journalism and Law, Oana Giurgiu has extensive experience as a producer of television programs, music videos and events as well as organizing Transilvania International Film Festival. She was cinematographer on the documentary “Doina and Nicolo”(1996) and directed TV documentaries as “The spider web” (1997), “About sand”(1998), “Refugee in Romania” (2004), “Me sem baxtalo?...”(2008). In 2004, she was location manager on Cristi Puiu\'s Cannes-award winner “The death of Mr. Lazarescu” and later, produced Tudor Giurgiu\'s feature debut “Love sick” which premiered in Berlinale 2006 and was a box-office success in Romania. Oana was the Romanian production manager on behalf of Libra Film for the Hungarian-German co-production “Delta” by Kornél Mundruczó, Fipresci award at Cannes 2008. In 2008 was the Romanian producer participating in Cannes, at “Producers on the move”- a project of European Film Promotion. She co-produced “Katalin Varga” by Peter Strickland, Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution at Berlinale 2009 and Best European Discovery at European Film Academy Awards 2009. Currently as director/producer, she is developing at Archidoc – La femis workshop, the documentary “From Romania to Zion”. Her last projects as executive producer, “The kino caravan” by Titus Muntean, a co-production with Filmkombinat (Germany) was premiered in Pussan 2009 and “Somewhere at Palilula” the debut film of Silviu Purcarete is now in postproduction, while second film of Tudor Giurgiu “Of snails and men” is in pre-production.
Ioana Mischie-director:
Ioana Mischie is a Romanian-born cinematic storyteller (screenwriter/director) and transmedia futurist, awarded for filmmaking, creative writing, interactive concepts and a Fulbright Grantee Alumna of USC School of Cinematic Arts, researching transmedia storytelling as part of her doctoral study.Her cinematic projects as writer/director have traveled to more than 70 festivals worldwide and were developed in international programs. Co-founder and Head of Storyscapes, an NGO focusing transmedia storytelling and expanded narratives initiated in 2012 and since 2015 arts-based research collaborator of CINETic, a recently created Eastern European centre focussing the interaction between neuroscience and groundbreaking audio-visual paths.
Oana Țenter - director:
Oana Tenter is a documentary-maker and graduate student at UC Santa Cruz,
part of the Social Documentation MFA program. She is the recipient of a 2020-2022 Fulbright scholarship. Oana’s film “The Pastor’s Women” - about a Roma Pentecostal community set in her home country Romania - was screened at the UN-backed World Conference on Statelessness in the Hague and by Open City Docs London in 2019. Her work includes collaborations with The Roundhouse, The Young Vic Theatre, The Tab London, VIY. Her writing can be found in The Guardian, The Evening Standard, Internazionale, Scena9, Dispatch.
Ioana Flora- actress:
Ioana Flora debuted in acclaimed Romanian director Cristi Puiu's Stuff and Dough/Marfa si banii, where she starred alongside Dragos Bucur and Alexandru Papadopol. It was the first Romanian picture selected for the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs program at Cannes in 2001 and was credited with starting the New Wave of Romanian cinema. Recently, Ioana played the female lead in The Christmas Gift/Cadoul de Craciun, a short feature that is among the 10 live action shorts shortlisted for the 2020 Academy Awards. Directed by Bogdan Muresanu, the short film also received the Best Short Movie award at the European Film Awards in 2019. She is a critical darling, with both Romanian and international film critics heaping praise and accolades on her for being "an intense and instinctive artist - who always captures nuances with amazing precision and burns on the inside while acting, insofar as she can carry a whole film by herself." Ioana's filmography counts as many as 25 national and international productions, both in cinema and TV, and she was the recipient of one of the most valued distinctions in the international film industry - the Best Actress Award that she won at the Thessaloniki Film Festival in 2008, for Adrian Sitaru's Hooked.
About Our Moderator:
Alina Haliliuc earned her Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Public Advocacy from the University of Iowa. Her scholarship examines public language under conditions of socio-political change, such as post-communist Romania. She reads a variety of cultural forms – from public debates and museums to live performances and film – with a curiosity for how the affective, ethical, and political imagination of people living in post-communism is discursively shaped. More recently, she has turned to ethics and affect as keys to discerning more enduring political imaginaries. In analyses of Romanian New Wave films “The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu” and “4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days,” (in The Journal of Popular Culture and Text and Performance Quarterly) as well as in her field-based rhetorical criticism of nationalist performer Dan Puric (in Text + Field: Innovations in Rhetorical Method), Dr. Haliliuc examines how emotional and linguistic habits from the communist past are squared with ethical commitments in the present, with political consequences more difficult to map. She is currently Associate Professor at Denison University.
About the films:
Occasional Spies: Hailing from Romania, Yugoslavia, Slovakia and Austria, the subjects of Occasional Spies are young Jews who were recruited to Palestine during WWII to help the local resistance repel German invaders. Using the subjects' own voices to highlight their little-known acts of heroism, combined with both archival images and recreations from their retellings, the film amplifies these young Jewish fighters' fears and hopes as they navigated the increasingly hostile and violent Europe that they used to call home.
The Pastor's Women: The vibrant world of Pentacostal Roma in Romania is seldom seen outside that community. This short documentary explores the life of a pastor’s wife as she works tirelessly for her family and to improve her Roma community. She supports them all as a pillar of courage, love and hope. We see, too, this life from her six daughters’ perspectives.
Fragile: In Fragile, Ioana Mischie’s creative documentary, actress Ioana Flora gives voice to several Romanian women who have suffered abuse and trauma. Written by Flora in collaboration with Rucsandra Pop, the script compiles real stories under a common theme: “Women are not made to be broken.” Flora's inhabitation of each of the women's stories is performed with empathy, respect, and understanding.
Click Here to watch the films that will be part of the discussion: https://watch.eventive.org/rffs2021
The film centers around Tenzin, a modern man single-mindedly focused on creating Kathmandu’s first “European style” café. He’s being haunted by visions but, being a committed atheist, brushing off his visions and his best friend’s superstitious. However, Tenzin’s visions and the prognostications of a monk oracle lead him on a chase through Katmandu to find a dakini--the lady with fangs and a mustache who maybe able to help avoid a cursed fate. Modern and ancient worlds collide as the film explores what director Khyentse Norbu calls “some of the last genuine residues of Tibetan mysticism.
To register, click here.
Sunday, November 14 until Sunday, November 21
Free, Virtual Cultural Celebration: Join us in a week-long celebration and share the virtual Pittsburgh POLISHFEST '21 with your family, friends and neighbors, across the street, across the country or across the world. Celebrate a variety of Polish, Lithuanian and Carpatho-Rusyn traditions, including folk music, folk dance, culinary demonstrations with recipes, historical, religious, and folk-art offerings. These presentations were created to remember something old, discover something new, keeping alive our traditions alive in an ever-changing world.
Sunday, November 14
Come brush up on your Korean skills in a casual, out of the classroom environment!
Monday, November 15
Interested in global health, nursing, midwifery, and medical practice? Learn how the history in these areas has influenced the development of nursing functions and examine how ethics, sociology, religion, law, economics, and philosophy have affected clinical practice and the impact these have had on the role of nurses and other medical practitioners.
This short-term, accelerated summer program on the ComparativeHealthcare Systems and Global Perspectives on Nursing History is a unique opportunity to compare the healthcare systems of the US and the UK and explore questions of universal healthcare, including issues of inequality in accessing it.
Learn more by registering for our information session at https://bit.ly/2YCCUYx or visit globalexperiences.pitt.edu/londonhealth
This talk examines how Japanese colonizers and Taiwanese subjects transformed colonial Taiwan—the sub-tropical island Japan acquired from China in 1895—into a staging ground for imperial expansion across the East and South China seas. Taking advantage of Taiwan's proximity and cultural affinities with South China and Southeast Asia, Japanese colonial leaders innovated new strategies to compete with the Chinese and Western powers for regional hegemony. They mobilized Taiwanese overseas as economic and cultural brokers in the pre-war period (1895–1937) and as military personnel during the Asia-Pacific wars (1937–45). Studying the intricate ties between colonial governance and international relations helps us transcend the conventional emphasis on two-way relations between Japan's home islands and each of its colonies. A regional approach to Taiwan allows us to recover transnational networks often neglected due to divisions in area studies. Japanese imperialism was a contested process among not only state agencies but also mobile colonial subjects whose interests did not easily map on to national, local, or ethnic categories. The overseas Taiwanese in particular challenge prevailing assumptions of imperial hierarchies. Gradations of power and categories of identity—colonizer and colonized—were much more fluid outside Taiwan's territorial borders.
Seiji Shirane is an Assistant Professor of Japanese History at the City College of New York (CUNY). His teaching and research interests include the Japanese Empire, Sino-Japanese relations, and war and migration in East Asia. His first book, Imperial Gateway: Colonial Taiwan and Japanese Expansion in South China and Southeast Asia, 1895–1945, will be published by Cornell University Press in 2022. Dr. Shirane received his B.A. from Yale University and Ph.D. from Princeton University. A native of NYC and fluent in Japanese and Chinese, he has studied and worked in Japan, China, and Taiwan for several years. His research has received support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Fulbright, the Social Science Research Council, and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.
To register, click here.
Join Brazil Nuts for their weekly Portuguese conversation hour at all levels!
Join members of the French Club to and have casual conversation in French! All levels welcome.
Tuesday, November 16
Gender Equality in Public Administration: A Global Workshop will convene academics, practitioners, and experts to further global monitoring of women’s participation and leadership in public service. To that end, the workshop will profile results from a new UNDP-Pitt global report on gender equality in public administration (GEPA) (https://www.undp.org/publications/global-report-gender-equality-public-a...).
The report compiles data and cutting-edge research on progress towards gender parity in the civil service in 170 countries. The workshop will focus on three research areas: 1) glass ceilings that undercut women’s representation in top leadership and senior management positions in the civil service; 2) glass walls that limit gender equality across policy areas, with particular attention to environmental ministries; and 3) gender inequalities in public institutions tasked with COVID-19 response. The workshop will conclude with a discussion of the path forward towards building more inclusive, participatory and representative institutions.
The effects of COVID-19 have been felt unevenly across Europe, a trend which continues into the recovery from the pandemic. In this panel, experts will discuss how these inequalities have been felt on an individual level and at the national level in terms of health and educational outcomes and economic impacts.
Panelists:
Holly Jarman, University of Michigan
Julia Lynch, University of Pennsylvania
Martin Myant, European Trade Union Institute
Sylke Schnepf, JRC-European Commission
Moderated by Jae-Jae Spoon, University of Pittsburgh
Audience Participation is encouraged.
#CoE
During the Inca Empire, Cochabamba was used strictly as farmland to feed the entire Inca Empire. Remains of this empire provide an excellent opportunity for students to study the remnants of this ancient civilization. Pitt in Bolivia: Culture, Society, & Service Learning offers students the opportunity to learn about contemporary issues facing a diverse and largely indigenous population. During this 6-week program, students will take courses on culture and infectious diseases specific to the Andean country. Understand and learn about communicable diseases and risk mitigation in this vulnerable population.
Learn more by registering for our information session at https://bit.ly/3Fld2RD or visit globalexperiences.pitt.edu/bolivia
In professional and personal situations alike, the ability to present an effective and respectful argument is an asset. Whether negotiating for a pay increase or influencing the media on behalf of an organization, the art and skill of persuasion is useful no matter the career or situation. A panel representing nonprofit, government affairs, and media relations will offer participants advice and tactics on building a persuasive and compelling argument for your organization and for yourself in the workplace.
Join the Chinese Language & Culture Club for their biweekly meetings where we will build our Chinese language skills and participate in fun cultural activities!
Wednesday, November 17
Join us for a talk on Jewish Romanian history and collective memory formation in Romanian film with director Oana Giurgiu and historians Cristina A. Bejan and Adrian Cioflâncă. The session will be moderated by Libby Langsner.
Register HERE for the event:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUuf-CoqzsjGtZsT4HXNyHtkZU26th...
Click Here to watch the films that will inform our discussion ( Radu Jude's Dead Nation and The Exist of the Trains, Oana Giurgiu's Occasional Spies) November 12-21st:
https://watch.eventive.org/rffs2021
Event organized in partnership with ARCHER - Romanian American Coalition for Human and Equal Rights.
About the Event:
The issues of the Holocaust, the Romanian-Jewish experience and identity, still remain relevant, and often controversial, topics in contemporary Romanian culture. Film has become a vehicle for these taboo subjects to be explored and for the multi-faceted history of the Romanian Jewish experience, especially during World War Two, to come to light.
Collective memory is defined as how groups remember their past, but the question of who is considered the “group,” and which memories are passed down and how, is more malleable than one might think.
Directors Radu Jude and Oana Girgiu both seek to challenge and expand what we know about Romanian history, and, in essence, who gets to be Romanian.
About Our Guests:
Oana Giurgiu:
Oana Giurgiu is a law and journalism graduate, having directed television documentaries before working in film on Cristi Puiu’s 2005 Cannes Un certain regard winner, “The Death of Mr Lăzărescu” and then on Kornél Mundruczó’s 2008 Cannes FIPRESCI winner, “Delta”.
She produced three of Tudor Giurgiu’s films: “Love Sick” (Berlinale 2006, Panorama); the 2012 Romanian box office hit “Of Snails and Men” (Warsaw IFF); and “Why Me?” (Berlinale 2015, Panorama). She also produced Peter Strickland’s “Katalin Varga” (Berlinale 2009, Silver Bear, European Discovery of the year at European Film Academy Awards) and Cristi Puiu’s “Sieranevada” (Cannes 2016). Oana co-produced Hungarian titles “Eden”, dir. Agnes Kocsis (Rotterdam IFF 2020) and “Spiral” (in post-production), dir. Cecilia Felmeri and the Slovak “The Servants”, dir. Ivan Ostrochovsky (Berlinale 2020, Encounters), and the Turkish “Before two Dawns” (in post-production), dir. Selman Nacar (working progress awards at Meetings on the bridge, Istanbul IFF 2020, and Antalia 2019), produced the greatest Romanian box office hit in recent years, “Moromete Family: On the Edge of Time”, which received ten Gopo Awards in 2019.
After working on several television documentary productions, she made her directorial debut with a feature-length historical documentary, “Aliyah DaDa”, screened in Astra Sibiu, Jerusalem Jewish IFF, alongside other Jewish festivals and screenings worldwide, and recognized as Best Romanian Documentary at the Gopo Awards 2015, now she just launched her new documentary “Occasional Spies”, Special mention of the Jury at Astra Film Festival 2021.
Adrian Cioflâncă:
Adrian Cioflâncă is co-director with Radu Jude of the documentary The Exit of the Trains (2020). He is a historian, director of the „Wilhelm Filderman” Center for the Study of Jewish History in Romania and a member of the Collegium of the National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives. He is also a researcher with the "A. D. Xenopol” Institute of History (belonging to the Romanian Academy). He was a member of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania (2003-2004) and expert in The Presidential Commission for the Analysis of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania (2006), and a co-author of the Final Reports of the two commissions. Since 2005, he is a member of the Romanian Delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. A “Tziporah Wiesel” Fellow of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington (2009), between 2010-2012, he was a department director in The Institute for the Investigation of the Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile. Adrian Cioflâncă edited, in collaboration, eight volumes; the last one: “Discurs și violență antisemită în România modern” (Discourse and Antisemitic Violence in Modern Romania), Hasefer, București, 2020. He also authored studies in fields like the history of the Holocaust, history of communism, political violence, cultural history, the theory of history. Consultant for several movies and theatrical plays.
Cristina Bejan:
Cristina A. Bejan is an award-winning Romanian-American historian, theatre artist, and poet. A Rhodes and Fulbright scholar, she currently teaches history at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Bejan received her Masters and DPhil (PhD) in Modern History from the University of Oxford and her BA in Philosophy (Honors) from Northwestern. A playwright and spoken word poet (Lady Godiva), her creative work has appeared in the US, UK, Romania, and Vanuatu. Bejan runs the arts group Bucharest Inside the Beltway. She has published two books (history and poetry), a play in the anthology "Voices on the Move" (eds. Domnica Radulescu and Roxana Cazan), and 64 articles and the African continent introduction for the US Holocaust Memorial Museum's "Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos Vol. 3."
About Our Moderator:
Libby Langsner was the 2020-2021 Jewish Heritage Program Fellow at World Monuments Fund, where she worked with global Jewish communities to help steward their built heritage. She completed her masters in the History of Art focusing on countercultural art from Eastern European and Latin America at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London in 2020. Her MA dissertation focused on the issues of gender and culpability in contemporary Eastern European Holocaust film. Before attending the Courtauld, Libby completed her undergraduate education in art history at Tufts University and worked at multiple art galleries throughout New York City.
Join the German Department for Laber Rhabarber, a weekly German conversation hour that is open to all!
The mission of the Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS) is to promote global understanding through support for teaching, learning, and research in and on Latin America, the Caribbean, and the diverse diasporic communities of Latin American and Caribbean origin.
The cartonera Publishing trend began in Buenos Aires in 2003, organized by writers and artists producing low-cost, hand-made books, using recycled cardboard (thus the name cartonera). Interestingly, literacy rates improve with access to cartonera books. The books are produced in a collective-circular way, in which authors become – designers become – publishers become – authors.
The Cartonera phenomenon has expanded across the Americas, Europe and Africa. CLAS will facilitate cartonera publishing through this workshop focused on Pittsburgh schools and the larger community. We aim to promote ways in which language, social studies, and science teachers can work together using their creativity to recycle basic materials while promoting literacy.
A weekly conversation table for people interested in German culture and language, all proficiency levels are welcome!
Join the Spanish Club and Brazil Nuts for a music-themed Kahoot and conversation in Spanish and Portuguese
Thursday, November 18
A Japanese-English language social hour to bring together visiting students from Yasuda University and local Pitt students. An evening of language and cultural exchange.
Watching documentary “Together We Cycle” or “Why We Cycle” (VIMEO, 56 minutes) about the history of cycling in the Netherlands and “Mama Agatha” (16 minutes; YouTube) about a Ghanian immigrant who teaches migrant women to cycle in south Amsterdam.
Global Issues Through Literature (GILS)
Fall and Spring 2021-22: Imagining Other Worlds: Globalizing Science Fiction and Fantasy
This reading group for K-12 educators explores literary texts from a global perspective. Content specialists present the work and its context, and participants brainstorm innovative pedagogical practices for incorporating the text and its themes into the curriculum. Sessions this year will take place virtually on Thursday evenings from 5-8 PM (EST). Books and three Act 48 credit hours are provided.
Register for the reading groups here - https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/global/gils
Discussion led by Professor Sabrina Robinson, Instructor in Slavic Languages & Literatures, University of Pittsburgh
Co-sponsored by the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies
Contact Maja Konitzer with questions at majab@pitt.edu
Join the Persian Language Table every other Thursday at the Global Hub!
Friday, November 19
Anthony Kruszewski is professor emeritus at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP).
Beata Halicka is professor at Adam Mickiewicz University Poznań/Poland.
During this conversation, we will discuss Beata Halicka’s biography of Anthony Kruszewski. Professor Kruszewski was first a Polish scout fighting in World War II against the Nazi occupiers, then a Prisoner of War and Displaced Person in Western Europe. He was stranded as a penniless immigrant in post-war America and eventually became a pioneer in the field of Borderland Studies. His life story is a microcosm of twentieth-century history, covering various theatres and incorporating key events and individuals.
The discussion will be moderated by Jan Musekamp (DAAD Visiting Associate Professor, Dept of History).
Please join us as we honor Tareq Alaows with the Johnson Institute’s Emerging Leader Award in recognition of his dedicated work to represent and advocate for underrepresented minorities and refugees in Germany.
Tareq Alaows is a legal professional and political leader. Born and raised in Syria, Alaows came to Germany in 2015 as a refugee and has since become a German citizen. Alaows dedicates his career to advocacy and representation for refugee and minority populations in German politics, becoming the first Syrian refugee to run for German Parliament in 2021. Before his departure from Syria in 2015, Alaows worked as a law student, activist, and humanitarian worker for the Red Crescent. In Germany, Alaows founded a refugee political group called Refugee Strike Bochum and an advocacy organization called Seebrucke, which seeks to establish safe havens for refugees and speak against the criminalization of refugee rescue. Alaows also performs legal counseling for refugees in Germany.
Each year, the Johnson Institute presents an Emerging Leader award to an individual still in the early part of their career, who is committed to the highest standards of professional leadership, compassion, ethics, and stewardship of our world and the people who share it. Past honorees have included President and CEO of Baltimore Corps Fagan Harris, Civil Rights Corps Founder and Executive Director Alec Karakatsanis, and Eco-Soap Bank Founder and Executive Director Samir Lakhani.
We will honor Mr. Alaows in a virtual award ceremony, followed by a brief talk by Alaows and Q&A with the audience. This event is free and open to the public. We will be joined by the University Center for International Studies as a cosponsor for this event.
We look forward to you joining us for the session! Registration required.
Addverse+Poesia is a transnational and multilingual student organization dedicated to celebrating Black/Indigenous and LGBTQIA+ writers, poets, etc. Join us for your weekly meetings on Fridays from 4:30-6PM!
Facilitated by Dr. Jean-Jacque Ngor Sène, Associate Professor of History and Cultural Studies, Chatham University
“La République Française,” has been, for the last hundred years or so, a Muslim Global Power. The French, more particularly in Modern Times, have arguably stood in World History as the very top incubator-nation of theories, from that of the “Noble Savage” falsely attributed to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, to that of (Colonial Cultural) “Assimilation” formalized by, say, Arthur Girault, onto that of “Deconstruction” in post WWII times with Brother Jacques Derrida. One such new theory out of the Hexagon of Fading Glory is the controversial nébuleuse known as l’Islamo-Gauchisme (Islamo-Leftism???) fathered by Pierre-André Taguieff in 2002 from what we think we know. David Robinson’s Paths of Accommodation, Muslim Societies and French Colonial Authorities in Senegal and Mauritania, 1880 -1921 (Ohio University Press) straddles the tropes of Negotiation, Cooperation, Sabotage, Resistance, Jihad, and more importantly, for our chosen focus, Knowledge and Power Crystallized into (Symbolic) Sociopolitical Capital. Dr. Sène, will lead a discussion focused on the diversity of Arabic sources, archival sources from the colonial registries, oral ethnographic documents, and powerful folkloric testimonies from the early 1900s onwards. The book is a unique springboard for a re-evaluation of (Muslim) Civil Societies’ agency against neo-imperial forces of mass exploitation/oppression in our own times.
This discussion is cosponsored by the African Studies Center and the European Studies Center at the University of Pittsburgh and Chatham University.
Act 48 Credits available for PA teachers.
For more information:https://www.cerisnet.pitt.edu/event/ceris-fall-book-discussion-for-educa...
Monday, November 22
Join Brazil Nuts for their weekly Portuguese conversation hour at all levels!
Join members of the French Club to and have casual conversation in French! All levels welcome.
Wednesday, November 24
Join the German Department for Laber Rhabarber, a weekly German conversation hour that is open to all!
A weekly conversation table for people interested in German culture and language, all proficiency levels are welcome!
Thursday, November 25
Join the Pitt French Club and practice your French language skills!
The Irish Club at Pitt meets every two weeks during the semester to share Irish culture and language.
Friday, November 26
Addverse+Poesia is a transnational and multilingual student organization dedicated to celebrating Black/Indigenous and LGBTQIA+ writers, poets, etc. Join us for your weekly meetings on Fridays from 4:30-6PM!
Sunday, November 28
Inspired by the European Year of Rail, which shines a light on one of the most sustainable, innovative, and safest modes of transportation, and acknowledging the challenges we have all faced during the pandemic in traveling and forging new connections, the inaugural MEET EU Short Film Competition for U.S. Youth asks young people to create a short film (documentary or non-documentary) responding to the theme "Transatlantic Connections."
Who is eligible? Anyone ages 18-35 who are resident of OR currently enrolled in a college or university in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, or Florida. In addition, recent alumni (age 35 or under) of Florida International University, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, or the University of Pittsburgh (all campuses) are also eligible, regardless of residency.
APPLY BY NOVEMBER 28, 2021
https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/esc/outreach/community/meet-eu-film-competition
Come brush up on your Korean skills in a casual, out of the classroom environment!
Monday, November 29 until Tuesday, November 30
The “Relearn our Land” Initiative is a student sustainability project that highlights the cultural and ethnic diversity aspect of sustainability by allowing students and staff on campus to interact with both nature and cultural history in a meaningful way. We hope to honor and respect the important but not well-known history of indigenous Native American groups in the area, in part by using native plants that they would have relied on as a way of conveying their history. This exhibit will spotlight the garden space to come in the spring of 2022 outside of Posvar that will contain medicinal, decorative, and native plants that will combine engagement and awareness with biodiversity efforts on campus. This two-day exhibit at the Global Hub will highlight research on Indigenous history in the Northeast region, showcase plants to be featured in the green space, and provide an opportunity for students to become engaged in the upcoming construction of the garden next year.
Students are encouraged to stop by from 11:30AM-1:30PM on Monday, November 29th for a community learning session where participants can learn more about our research on indigenous environmental history and how to get involved in the garden project coming in spring of 2022.
This event is supported by The Green Fund and is in partnership with the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.
Monday, November 29
Join Brazil Nuts for their weekly Portuguese conversation hour at all levels!
Join members of the French Club to and have casual conversation in French! All levels welcome.
Tuesday, November 30
Join the Chinese Language & Culture Club for their biweekly meetings where we will build our Chinese language skills and participate in fun cultural activities!