The Global Experiences Office is holding our annual international photo contest again this year! There are four categories of photo submissions: The World as Your Classroom; Pitt Pride; “When in Rome”; and Artistic Eye. GEO is asking the Pitt community to vote for their favorite in each category and four winners will be named following international education week. The finalists' photos will be displayed in the Global Hub in Posvar for the Pitt community to vote for their favorite photo through a ballot box displayed alongside the photos. Be sure to visit the Global Hub from 10/17-10/21 to vote for your favorite photo!

The OIS Symposium is held every year to help educate and train the Pitt faculty and staff about important issues related to immigration and our Pitt international community.

Since the opening of Japan’s borders to the West in the late nineteenth century, the kimono has become a dynamic and evolving source of inspiration for global fashion design, particularly in the West. It has had an impact on early haute couture and influenced the “Japanese Fashion Revolution” of the 1980s, as well as the work of contemporary fashion designers. This presentation will examine the kimono as a sophisticated garment that has continually influenced the evolution of fashion.

Melissa Marra-Alvarez is curator of education and research at The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (MFIT) where she has curated several exhibitions including, Minimalism/Maximalism (2019), Force of Nature (2017) and co-curated Head to Toe (2021) and Fashion & Politics (2009). Marra-Alvarez is co-editor of the publications Food and Fashion (Bloomsbury, 2022) and ¡Moda Hoy! Latin American and Latinx Fashion Design, (Bloomsbury, 2023) and co-authored Fashion Underground: The World of Susanne Bartsch (Yale University Press, 2015) with MFIT director Dr. Valerie Steele. Her research interests include twenty and twenty-first century fashion with an emphasis on fashion and culture, fashion and sustainability, and the study of fashion in relation to the natural sciences. Marra-Alvarez holds a M.A. in Museum Studies: Fashion and Textile History from The Fashion Institute of Technology.

To register for this event, click here.

Join us for International Speed Friending! Whether you’re an international student at Pitt looking to make American friends in Pittsburgh or a native speaker of English interested in meeting people from different cultures, this FREE event hosted by the English Language Institute is perfect for you!  If you’ve ever heard of “Speed Dating,” this is similar. The only difference is that the objective here is to make friends. Refreshments will be served and prizes will be raffled off!

Please register in advance by October 15. Space is limited. If all seats are filled, you will be put on a waiting list. If you show up without registering in advance, seats might be available at that time, but there is no guarantee.

Contact rom17@pitt.edu if you have any questions.