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Learn the history of mărțișor and watch the Romanian Room committee make them and talk about this old tradition.

Falling on March 1 of every year, Mărțișor is an old Romanian tradition of gifting a red and white string attached to a small piece of jewelry or a flower. This is believed to bring health and luck to the wearer.

As humans rely more and more on electronic devices to support their everyday activities, there are ever present warnings about the impacts such reliance has on human autonomy ranging from who owns and controls information networks, the inequitable impact of technology consumption on peoples and places, varying accessibility of technology around the globe, and the promises and limitations of technology in improving human health. By engaging in technology as a lens, this sequence of weekend micro-courses encourages students to examine technology as a system disproportionately impacting humanity by enabling and constraining human rights of groups of people around the globe. With a multi-disciplinary focus, the course invites researchers and practitioners from the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon, and relevant fields more broadly.

The course will occur on Friday, March 18th, Saturday, March 19th, and Sunday, March 21st. Engagement in the course should be synchronous; accommodations for those in significant time zone differences will be provided to allow enrollment and completion of all elements of the weekend. A pre-course video review of the major course assignment will need to be completed prior to the course starting.

Students must register for this course through PeopleSoft, which can be accessed via their my.pitt account.

Spring Mini-Course: Technology, Humanity, and Social Justice - SATURDAY

● Session 3 – 8:30AM-10:00AM: Group Activity: Analyzing Governance and Technology Case Study

● Session 4 – 10:15AM-11:30AM: Andrew Meade McGee, Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of History, Carnegie Mellon University

LUNCH 11:30AM-1:00PM

● Session 5 – 1:00PM-2:15PM: Jacqueline Lipton, Assistant Professor of Legal Writing, School of Law, University of Pittsburgh

● Session 6 – 2:30PM-3:45PM: Song Shi, Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Informatics and Networked Systems, University of Pittsburgh

● Session 7 – 4:00PM-5:30PM: Group Activity: Comparing Analyses Governance and Technology Case Studies