The Undergraduate Research Symposium is an annual event since 2002 designed to provide undergraduate students, from the University of Pittsburgh and other colleges and universities, with advanced research experiences and opportunities to develop presentation skills. The event is open to undergraduates from all majors and institutions who have written a research paper from a social science, humanities, or business perspective focusing on the study of Eastern, Western, or Central Europe, the European Union, Russia, or Central Eurasia.

After the initial submission of papers, selected participants are grouped into panels according to their research topics. The participants then give 10- to 15- minute presentations based on their research to a panel of faculty and graduate students. The presentations are open to the public.

Visit the website at ucis.pitt.edu/crees/urs

Apply here by January 7, 2022: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd-jrnDiSkgRpr81fKHzQQMXm3E2UN3...

The Emerging Global Leaders Program encourages early- to mid-career global leaders to model their expertise and experience. This year's Emerging Global Leader Tareq Alaows will be holding office hours from April 11-15, 2022 at the Global Hub for students who are interested in hearing more about Tareq's experiences.

Tareq Alaows was a recipient of a Johnson Institute Emerging Leader award in the Fall and is an activist engaged in migrant/refugee issues and a former candidate for the Bundestag whose campaign was derailed by threats to himself and his family. Tareq has been involved in the Seebrucke movement in Germany and more recently has been working on refugee/migration issues related to Afghanistan and Ukraine.

POSTPONED!!

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a leading cause of death around the world, with the highest burdens in low-resource settings, and is expected to grow exponentially to cause around 10 million deaths annually in 2050. It is defined by high degrees of complexity given its international, multisectoral, ‘one health’ and ‘creeping’ features, which creates significant challenges for good governance. In addition, only 0,5% of all AMR related research comes from the social sciences, which indicates that we know relatively little about the behavioral and institutional aspects of antibiotics. It is also typically referred to as a low-salient political issue. This talk will introduce three dimensions of European governance of antibiotics; first, how experts, typically top senior bureaucrats, create an ‘administrative action space’ when politicians fail to raise the issue; second, the networking dynamics among domestic bureaucracies to create collaborative governance; and thirdly, the role and function of the EU Commission to act as a third-party enforcer in solving the large-scale collective action dilemma of AMR.

Daniel Carelli is a PhD Candidate in political science at the University of Gothenburg. His dissertation investigates how administrative traditions and bureaucratic autonomy affect inter-bureaucratic collaboration around the issue of antimicrobial resistance in Europe.

Dr. Joseph-Masséna will present excerpts from her book manuscript Voicing Vodou: Haitian Women Writers and the Goddess Ezili. Her project highlights a previously unidentified literary genre created by three Haitian women writers which she calls “The Eziliphonic text. ”The term “eziliphonic” is a neologism which combines the name of feminine vodou deity “Ezili'' with the adjective “phonic,” referring to “voice” or “speech sound.” The book centers Haitian Women writers as theorists by demonstrating how, within this collectively created literary genre, they effectively rehabilitate vodou culture through their textualization of the feminine deity Ezili, while also centering voice and sound, not vision, as a critical category of the vodou imaginary. There are many iterations of Ezili spirits or lwas in Haitian vodou, but the ones studied here are Ezili Freda, the flirtatious mulatta and lover of all things beautiful, and Ezili Danto, the passionate dark-skinned single mother and fierce defender of her children. Each chapter draws on an interdisciplinary framework, grounded in Black feminist theory, Voice Studies, literary criticism, and Vodou Studies in order to show how Haitian women novelists mobilize Ezili’s vocal, or phonic, specificities in their narratives.

In preparation for the session, students will get acquainted with Jacques Stéphen Alexis’ Réalisme merveilleux or Frankétienne’s Spiralisme. Then, they will read passages from Omise'eke Natasha Tinsley’s Ezili's Mirrors (2018) and Christina Elizabeth Sharpe’s In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (2016). They will also listen to a selection of jazz music.

Dr. Cae Joseph-Masséna is an Assistant Professor of Comparative, Cultural and Francophone studies in the department of Modern Literature & Languages at the University of Miami. Her recent work focuses on contemporary Haitian women writers. A trained Jazz Vocalist and Berklee College of Music alumnus, her research focuses more broadly on the entanglement of voice, music, ritual and sound in Black women’s literary texts. Her research areas include comparative approaches to African diasporic literatures of the francophone Atlantic with an emphasis on Sound/Voice Studies, Haitian Studies and feminist queer of color critique.

Join the Arabic Language & Culture Club for an hour of conversing in the colloquial Arabic language while speaking on various current events.

Join the Chinese Language & Culture Club every other Tuesday to practice the Chinese language and participate in Chinese cultural activities,

The first meeting on 1/18 will be virtual: https://pitt.zoom.us/j/94596594820