Presenter: Nicholas R. Micinski
Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the University of Maine

Moderator: Paweł Lewicki, Associate Director
European Studies Center

Migration has become an important area of cooperation within the European Union and has faced several recent refugee crises, including people seeking protection from Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Ukraine. This lecture will discuss the ways in which cooperation within the EU has evolved over the last 20 years, focused on the starkly different responses in 2015-17 and 2022. The lecture will build on the findings in Micinski's book, Delegating Responsibility: International Cooperation on Migration in the European Union (2022).

Join the French Club for Spring 2023's weekly conversation hours, on both Wednesdays and Thursdays from 5-6:30 pm!

Note: French Conversation Hour will not meet in the Global Hub on Thursday, April 13.

Join the Italian Club for weekly Tavola Italiana on Thursdays from 12-1 pm during Spring 2023!

Join the French Club for Spring 2023's weekly conversation hours, on both Wednesdays and Thursdays from 5-6:30 pm!

Note: French Conversation Hour will not meet in the Global Hub on Thursday, April 13.

Join the Persian Club for weekly converstions on Thursdays at 8-9 pm during Spring 2023!

The Russian war in Ukraine has had innumerable impacts, from personal to political, local, national, and global. One of the many sea changes wrought by the war has been the reckoning within Slavic/Russian & Eurasian Studies over the outsized role Russia has played and continues to play in the field and what could and should be done about it. In its third year, the In Focus series will focus on decolonizing Russian and Eurasian studies. The invited panelists will consider the relationships of power that have long dominated the region, how they have impacted the field of study, and what, if anything, could and should be done about it.

The series will have six wide-ranging panels featuring speakers from various disciplines and institutions. Panelists and participants will be encouraged to consider why decolonizing Russian & Eurasian studies matters, how to implement concrete change in their classrooms, and how to conceive of the future of expertise within the field. All sessions will be convened using Zoom, live-streamed via YouTube, and recorded for later viewing.

The Global Studies Center and Postindustrial, a multimedia outlet focused on reimagining industrial communities, is hosting a 4-part series that will allow a small group of students to develop journalism skills while learning about global issues in the context of Appalachia. Students will get the opportunity to learn about podcast production and journalistic writing from Postindustrial journalists that have a wealth of knowledge and experience in reporting on global issues as they relate to our region. By the end of the series, students will have the tools to produce narrative written work, created a podcast episode, and learned about other podcast production techniques. These skills will be situated in discussions about the impacts of the war in Afghanistan, slow violence, and extractive economies featuring conversations with individuals who experienced those impacts firsthand both at home and abroad. This event is solely in person.

Asia has been undergoing a historic transformation that has often been referred to as the “Asian Century.” Representing 60% of the world’s population and 4 of the 10 largest economies, Asia plays a critical and ever-expanding role on the global stage. Transnational flows of people, goods, and ideas in and out of Asia have fueled much of the rapid change within the region and increased its influence abroad. As the world wrestles with issues of globalization, environmental sustainability, health, and labor migration, Asia’s impact on these issues defines many research questions spanning both academic and professional disciplines. On February 3-4, 2023, EDT and February 4-5, 2023, PST the faculties of the Asian Center, University of the Philippines Diliman, and the Asian Studies Center, University of Pittsburgh will join to deliver presentations that focus on several aspects of Global Asia.

For more information and to register for this event, please click here

Asia has been undergoing a historic transformation that has often been referred to as the “Asian Century.” Representing 60% of the world’s population and 4 of the 10 largest economies, Asia plays a critical and ever-expanding role on the global stage. Transnational flows of people, goods, and ideas in and out of Asia have fueled much of the rapid change within the region and increased its influence abroad. As the world wrestles with issues of globalization, environmental sustainability, health, and labor migration, Asia’s impact on these issues defines many research questions spanning both academic and professional disciplines.

On February 3-4, 2023, EDT and February 4-5, 2023, PST the faculties of the Asian Center, University of the Philippines Diliman, and the Asian Studies Center, University of Pittsburgh will join to deliver presentations that focus on several aspects of Global Asia. The topics that will be interrogated include health, migration, infrastructure and manufacturing development, and political economy. Our goal will be to exchange ideas and new avenues for research between the two institutions to build future co-sponsored research programs.

Join Brazil Nuts for their weekly Portuguese language conversation table during Spring semester, every Monday from 4:30-5:30 pm in the Global Hub!

Join CLAS ambassadors to learn more about CLAS academic offerings and related programs.

Maria Lotsmanova, former head of the document center of the GULAG History Museum, will present two short screenings: a four minute documentary on the Gulag History Museum and an eleven minute documentary short on her family history (with subtitles).
Maria Lotsmanova has until recently worked at Moscow’s Museum of Soviet Repressions (the GULAG History Museum, 2021 Winner of the Council of Europe Museum Prize), where she would run the Document Center that consults with visitors and gives regular seminars on how to find information in archives about people who were persecuted and convicted during the mass repression in the USSR. She would conduct research for museum exhibitions, publishing projects, museum storage practices and represent the Center at external venues. Her other professional interests include documentary filmmaking and photography, green activism, and sustainability projects. In 2022 Maria moved to Pittsburgh where she currently works as a gallery associate at the Carnegie Museum of Art.

Come and practice your Hungarian and meet others interested in the language! All levels welcome.

Ambassador (ret.) Norman Eisen is a senior fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings
Institution and a CNN Legal Analyst. At Brookings, he chairs the institution’s signature anticorruption
program, Leveraging Transparency to Reduce Corruption, and is the founder and
lead editor of the Brookings Russia Sanctions Tracker. He represents Brookings as the civil
society co-chair of the Financial Transparency and Integrity cohort for the Biden
administration’s second Summit for Democracy and co-chairs the Transatlantic Democracy
Working Group. Eisen is the co-author of the Democracy Playbook, which situates anticorruption
in the broader pro-democracy framework. Eisen frequently publishes on topics
relating to Ukraine and its reconstruction.

Join the German Club for Spring 2023's weekly conversation hours, on Tuesdays from 6:30-7:30 pm!

European Security: A European Studies Seminar
Discussions of “crisis at the border” fill the news on both sides of the Atlantic. Focusing on one of the primary European receiving countries in the current migration waves, this seminar will put forward a consideration of flexicuritization as a departure from the securitization of migration. As preparation for the discussion with Prof. Dimari, participants in the seminar will read three brief articles of hers available upon registration.

Moderator:

Randall Halle, Director of the European Studies Center, University of Pittsburgh

Panelist:

Georgia Dimari, Ph.D. University of Crete

About the Speaker: Dr. Georgia Dimari is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Department of Political Science of the University of Crete where she has taught security and securitization issues. Currently, she is exploring the transformation of the Greek Migration Policy the post-2015 period. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Crete, an MA in American Studies from the University of Turin, and a BA in International and European Studies from the University of Piraeus. She researches security, securitization of migration, de-securitization and migration policy, and the securitization of Covid- 19 in Greece. She participated in the research program (CA 10076) “Impact and categorization of the prospects of integration of refugees into the Greek productive system.” co-funded by the European Social Fund and national funds, and currently in the program “Management of Migration in Greece: Construction of a Pilot Model (Start-up) for Forecasting Migration Flows and Development of Policy Scenarios for Greek Immigration Policy” funded by the Research & Management Committee of the University of Crete.

SPEAKER:
Milada Anna Vachudova
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Professor Vachudova will explore how the rise in support for populist parties has shaped party systems in Europe over the last decade, focusing on ethnopopulist parties -- parties that make strong anti-pluralist appeals, vilifying individuals, groups and institutions labeled as culturally harmful. When in power, ethnopopulist parties use these appeals to justify the concentration of power -- and this playbook has helped bring authoritarian rule to Hungary while Poland stands on the brink. She unpacks why ethnopopulism has become a challenge to liberal democracy in Europe, how oppositions have responded -- and why EU member governments have shown such complacency and cynicism in countering it. This has led to the risk of a decoupling of the EU from the regime type of liberal democracy. Yet Russia's war against Ukraine is changing political contestation related to liberal democracy and to relations with Russia in key states including Poland and Germany. Professor Vachudova will close by reflecting on Ukraine's challenge to the European Union -- and whether and how the EU enlargement process can be revived as a tool of EU foreign policy.

Join the French Club for Spring 2023's weekly conversation hours, on both Wednesdays and Thursdays from 5-6:30 pm!

Note: French Conversation Hour will not meet in the Global Hub on Thursday, April 13.

This is the first event as part of the series Race, Rebellion, and Global Solidarity. The Battle of Algiers is a 1966 Italian-Algerian war film co-written and directed by Gillo Pontecorvo. One of the most extraordinary films ever made, The Battle of Algiers is an emotionally devastating account of the anticolonial struggle of the Algerian people and a brutally candid exposé of the French colonial mindset. It was shot on location in a Roberto Rossellini-inspired newsreel style: in black and white with documentary-type editing to add to its sense of historical authenticity, with mostly non-professional actors who had lived through the real battle. There is no registration for this screening.

Join the Spanish Club for Spring 2023's weekly conversation hours, on Wednesdays from 6-8 pm!

Join the Arabic Language and Culture Club for this weekly get-together and safe space for Arabic speakers to have a conversation and work on their language skills!

Join the weekly Italian get-together as they watch highlights from the Festival di Sanremo - one of the highlights of the year for Italians!

The start of Russia's war in Ukraine in 2014 has impacted regional security in the Black Sea through the occupation of Crimea. The massive invasion of 2022 has led to even more profound implications. Yet, Russia has failed to convert the control of Ukrainian territories into lasting strategic advantages. The recent liberation of Kherson and fear in Moscow that Ukraine might go into Crimea indicate a shift in the situation. The talk will shed light on the humanitarian impact of war, the disruption of global trade, and the larger security implication for the Black Sea region and Europe, more broadly.

Volodymyr Dubovyk is Associate Professor at the Department of International Studies, Odesa I. I. Mechnikov National University in Ukraine. He has conducted research at the Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (1997, 2006-2007) and the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland (2002), taught at the University of Washington in Seattle in 2013 as well as at St. Edwards University and the University of Texas in 2016-17. He is the co-author of Ukraine and European Security (Macmillan, 1999) and has published numerous articles on US-Ukraine relations, regional and international security, and Ukraine's foreign policy.

Javier Corrales - Amherst College, Raul Sánchez-Urribarri - La Trobe University, Jennifer Cyr - Universidad Torcuato Di Tella

Description: Join the French Club for Spring 2023's weekly conversation hours, on both Wednesdays and Thursdays from 5-6:30 pm!

Note: French Conversation Hour will not meet in the Global Hub on Thursday, April 13.

Flavio Limoncic, Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio De Janeiro

Free Chol Soo Lee tells the story of a Korean American death row inmate convicted of a 1973 Chinatown gangland murder in San Francisco. and the activists who led a pan-Asian American movement to free him.

The revolutionary prospect of socialism inspired homosexual emancipation and the growth of toleration toward same-sex relations in the first quarter of the twentieth century in many countries, including the UK, US, Hungary, and USSR. However, the development of LGBTQ+ rights within socialism was never linear and even.

The conference seeks to address those discrepancies and the reasoning behind them. It aims to discuss the LGBTQ+ experience and its political, social, and cultural implications under state socialism from a global perspective. What was the place of queerness under socialism? Was socialist ideology generally more responsive to queer people’s agenda and empathic towards them? How did legislation relate to same-sex activity change over time in socialist countries? How did the Cold War and geopolitical tensions between socialist and capitalist counties influence and inform sexual politics toward queer people and their perception? Why did some socialist countries, such as the Czech Republic, Hungary, and the GDR decriminalize homosexuality as early as the 1960s and the Polish People’s Republic never criminalize it? What strategies of networking and concealment did sexual and gender non-conformists adopt in the socialist countries where homosexuality was still illegal, such as Soviet Republics, China, and Cuba? What was the attitude towards gender and sexual dissidents among the left-leaning movements in capitalist countries? Why decriminalization of homosexuality and homosexual emancipation that followed it was subsequently cut off in some post-socialist countries such as Russia?

The main goal of the symposium is to reflect on the broad spectrum of topics related to the conjunction of queer and socialist ideology from a global and comparative perspective. The symposium aims at the broader public, including students, scholars, and activists.

The Undergraduate Model European Union is an annual event that gives students a chance to learn about the workings of the European Union through preparation for and participation in a hands-on two-day simulation of a meeting of the European Council. Model EU enhances students’ understanding of the issues and challenges facing the 27 member nations of the EU. Awards will be given to the most effective delegations and best individual position papers.

Discourse and Decolonization: Perspectives from Outside the Anglophone Academy is the second panel of the Decolonization in Focus Series.

The Russian war in Ukraine has had innumerable impacts, from the personal to the political, local, national and global. One of the many sea changes wrought by the war has been the reckoning within Slavic/Russian & Eurasian Studies over the outsized role Russia has played and continues to play in the field and what could and should be done about it. The invited panelists in this series will consider the relationships of power that have long dominated the region, how they have impacted the field of study, and what, if anything, could and should be done about it.

The series has six wide-ranging panels featuring speakers from various disciplines and institutions. Panelists and participants will be encouraged to consider why decolonizing Russian & Eurasian studies matters, how to implement concrete change in their classrooms, and how to conceive of the future of expertise within the field. All sessions will be convened using Zoom, live-streamed via YouTube, and recorded to be made available for later viewing.

Join the Global Studies Center and Dr. Eve Darian-Smith for a lecture on her book followed by a discussion with attendees. Dr. Darian-Smith serves as the Chair of the Department of Global and International Studies and is a professor of Global Studies at the University of California, Irvine. She has published several award-winning books focused on global issues. Trained as a lawyer, historian and anthropologist, Dr. Darian-Smith is a critical interdisciplinary scholar interested in issues of postcolonialism, human rights, legal pluralism, and socio-legal theory. Her current work focuses on authoritarianism and crises of democracy. In Global Burning: Rising Antidemocracy and the Climate Crisis, Dr. Eve Darian-Smith contends that using fire as a symbolic and literal thread connecting different places around the world allows us to better understand the parallel and related trends of the growth of authoritarian politics and climate crises and their interconnected global consequences. Copies of her book will be available for purchase at the event!

Are you looking to gain experience that will help prepare you for a globally-connected job market? Stop by Drop-In Hours to learn more about getting the Global Distinction added to your academic transcript, receiving special recognition at graduation, and standing out to prospective employers!

The Global Studies Center and Postindustrial, a multimedia outlet focused on reimagining industrial communities, is hosting a 4-part series that will allow a small group of students to develop journalism skills while learning about global issues in the context of Appalachia. Students will get the opportunity to learn about podcast production and journalistic writing from Postindustrial journalists that have a wealth of knowledge and experience in reporting on global issues as they relate to our region. By the end of the series, students will have the tools to produce narrative written work, created a podcast episode, and learned about other podcast production techniques. These skills will be situated in discussions about the impacts of the war in Afghanistan, slow violence, and extractive economies featuring conversations with individuals who experienced those impacts firsthand both at home and abroad. This event is solely in person.

Join Dr. Eve Darian-Smith as she leads this teaching workshop for K-16 educators. The focus of this workshop will be on helping educators develop global studies into their curriculum by specifically thinking about incorporating issues around planetary warming as a theme (and its global intersectionality with racism, public health, biospecies extinction, and access to natural resources). The workshop will be hybrid in Posvar Hall and Zoom. Room location is to be determined.

Dr. Darian-Smith serves as the Chair of the Department of Global and International Studies and is a professor of Global Studies at the University of California, Irvine. She has published several award-winning books focused on global issues. Trained as a lawyer, historian and anthropologist, Dr. Darian-Smith is a critical interdisciplinary scholar interested in issues of postcolonialism, human rights, legal pluralism, and socio-legal theory. Her current work focuses on authoritarianism and crises of democracy. 

Organized under the auspices of The Journal of Asian Studies to help increase the range, breadth and quality of journal article manuscripts, the theme for this workshop is "Boundary Pushing." Significant new work in Asian Studies often runs counter to or across traditional categories of scholarly conversation. For this reason, work that pushes boundaries is often difficult to frame effectively for publication. The workshop is designed and conducted by the editors of JAS to help early career scholars prepare manuscripts for successful peer review. This roundtable session, open to the public, will include editors of the Journal of Asian Studies and editors from other well-established journals in related fields for a vibrant discussion on boundary-pushing writing and scholarship in Asian Studies. To register please click here.

Join Brazil Nuts for their weekly Portuguese language conversation table during Spring semester, every Monday from 4:30-5:30 pm in the Global Hub!

Join the Student Office of Sustainability, Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation, and the Global Studies Center for a student-centered discussion with Dr. Eve Darian-Smith, Chair of the Department of Global and International Studies and is a professor of Global Studies at the University of California, Irvine. She has published several award-winning books focused on global issues. Trained as a lawyer, historian and anthropologist, Dr. Darian-Smith is a critical interdisciplinary scholar interested in issues of postcolonialism, human rights, legal pluralism, and sociolegal theory. Her current work focuses on authoritarianism and crises of democracy. Food and refreshments will be provided!

2022-23- MEET EU EMERGING FILMMAKER:
VIDA SHERK,
Director, Night Ride (Noćna vožnja)

This is a three-part seminar that focuses on what makes a film visually distinctive, and
how mood boards and storyboards can be used in the pre-production process to
help the director, the cinematographer, the costume designer, the art director, and
the rest of the crew envision the right atmosphere for the film - and choose the
right tools to do so.

The goal of this seminar is also to encourage even Screenwriting students to
develop mood boards for their stories, as they can be a useful tool during the
screenwriting process as well.

FEB 14, 2023 @ 10:00-11:30 AM EST- Required
PART I: MOOD BOARDS - What are mood boards, and why are they important? Can
they be useful for screenwriters (during the development phase) as well, and how?

FEB 21, 2023 @ 10:00-11:30 AM EST (2nd Half-Optional)
PART II: STORYBOARDS – How do mood boards influence storyboards? How do we
make a storyboard?

FEB 28, 2023 @ 10:00-11:30 AM EST (Optional)
PART III: THE CHICKEN OR THE EGG? WHICH COMES FIRST? Are mood boards
useful only in the later stages of pre-production? Is there even a right way to
approach the development and pre-production process, or can we shake things up
and start with the parts of pre-production which are usually reserved for the later
stages in the process of making a movie, only after a story (or script) is already set
in stone?

REQUIRED WORK: Participants will be asked to produce mood boards and
storyboards for their own projects. We will discuss their own exercises and work
during the seminar. They will also be asked to watch Vida Skerk's short film “Night
Ride” beforehand, as this film and the material made during the preparation for
this project will be used as examples during the seminar.

Join CLAS ambassadors to learn more about CLAS academic offerings and related programs.

In the last few years, we have seen an increasing international awareness of the challenges facing the interaction between human populations and a changing environment. In France and Italy, these issues have in fact occupied a really important role in philosophical, social and political debates and initiatives for at least five decades. Our panelists will offer a diverse and far-reaching presentation of their own involvement with the research and initiatives presently occurring in Italy and France.
Moderator:
• Giuseppina Mecchia, University of Pittsburgh
Panelists:
• Yves Citton, Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint Denis, France
• Daniela Fargione, University of Turin, Italy
• Giuseppina Mecchia, University of Pittsburgh

Dr. Yves Citton, Professor of Literature and Media at the Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint Denis, France, will discuss a new-web-based platform that he has founded with international collaborators, the Terraforma Project, which aims at providing a more-than-human position on current ecological challenges. A report on Terraforma can be downloaded from this calendar.

Dr. Daniela Fargione, Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Turin, Italy and a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Pittsburgh this spring, is currently engaged in a transnational reflection on literary and media interventions on new climate challenges, and she will address the history and current engagements of Italian Green movements.

Dr. Mecchia, Associate Professor of French and Italian at Pitt, will talk about the living legacy in France but also internationally ot the insights of two of the most important French philosophers dealing with the presence of humanity on Earth, Bruno Latour and Michel Serres. Their work, since the 1980s, has inspired a multitude of researchers and activists.

Introduction: Keila Grinberg (Pitt)
Panelists: Flavio Limoncic (Unirio), Sergio Lifschitz (PUC-Rio), Daniel Schwabe (PUC-Rio), Carlos Laufer (PUC-Rio)
Moderator: Lara Putnam (Pitt)

Dr. Eve Darian-Smith is the Chair of the Department of Global and International Studies and professor of Global Studies at the University of California, Irvine. She has published several award-winning books focused on global issues. Trained as a lawyer, historian and anthropologist, Dr. Darian-Smith is a critical interdisciplinary scholar interested in issues of postcolonialism, human rights, legal pluralism, and sociolegal theory. Her current work focuses on authoritarianism and crises of democracy.

Come and practice your Hungarian and meet others interested in the language! All levels welcome.

Join the German Club for Spring 2023's weekly conversation hours, on Tuesdays from 6:30-7:30 pm!

What explains the resilience of local authorities in Ukraine after Russia’s invasion? Using original survey data, this talk explores how local authorities continue to provide public services and respond to crises because of Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure and massive internal displacement. The findings highlight a shifting social contract in Ukraine towards partnership between authorities and citizens as the foundation for democracy.

Oleksandra Keudel is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Public Policy and Governance at the Kyiv School of Economic and is a Petrach Ukrainian Studies Fellow at the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University. Her book “How Patronal Networks Shape Opportunities for Local Citizen Participation in a Hybrid Regime: A Comparative Analysis of Five Cities in Ukraine” was published with ibidem/Columbia University Press. Keudel’s research focuses on local democracy, social movements and civic engagement, and business-political arrangements at the local level in Ukraine.

Kaija E. Schilde
Jean Monnet Chair of European Security
Associate Professor, Pardee School of Global Studies
Director, Center for the Study of Europe
Project on the Political Economy of Security
Pardee School Initiative on Forced Migration and Human Trafficking

The EU is a non-unitary security state of international significance and is threat responsive to challenges to its interests. It has become a security state through a combination of incremental institutional layering and shifts in international threat, primarily the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea and intervention in Eastern Ukraine, and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. The security studies debate on European strategic autonomy has so far ignored and dismissed the infrastructural power of the EU. The EU’s infrastructural power comes from regulatory, monetary and market instruments, and a nascent but increasing direct procurement of military materiel. EU infrastructural power complicates EU-related state formation theory debates. Traditional security states extract resources from their society, directly tax their populations, and have formal authority to generate military capability. Historically, the EU has done none of these things. Scholars using the conventional lens of state security authority have concluded that the EU is not yet a security state, because it does not tax and spend to generate military capacity on its own (Kelemen & McNamara, 2022). However, this misdiagnoses the sources of infrastructural security power in the 21st century, and only compares the political development of the EU to the generation of military power in earlier centuries. Moreover, this position fails to consider the comparative: how do contemporary non-EU states generate military capacity? To what are we comparing EU state formation? I theorize a broader definition of security state to align with 21st Century generation of military power and evaluates the shifts in EU infrastructural power in light of changes.

Prior Title: EU Defense Cooperation and the War in Ukraine

Join members of Brazil Nuts and the Italian club as they make Valentine's in Portuguese and Italian, and practice conversation skills!

Join the French Club for Spring 2023's weekly conversation hours, on both Wednesdays and Thursdays from 5-6:30 pm!

This is the second event as part of the series Race, Rebellion, and Global Solidarity. The classic 1973 film, based on the novel by writer Sam Greenlee, tells the fictional story of Dan Freeman, the first Black CIA officer. The film, directed by the actor and filmmaker Ivan Dixon, follows Freeman through his training in the Central Intelligence Agency, his subsequent assignment as a field officer, and his eventual role as the leader of a paramilitary group engaged in armed resistance against institutionalized racism. There is no registration for this screening.

Join the Spanish Club for Spring 2023's weekly conversation hours, on Wednesdays from 6-8 pm!

Join the Arabic Language and Culture Club for this weekly get-together and safe space for Arabic speakers to have a conversation and work on their language skills!

This working group will meet in person every three weeks for the 2022-2023 academic year to discuss new scholarship about Eurasian borderlands. Faculty, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates are welcome to join. No prior expertise in Eurasia is necessary.

Mangia con noi! Bring your lunch and chat with us! Pitt students only, al levels welcome!

In the fourth installment of the Global Issues Through Literature Series (GILS), educators will convene to discuss George Takei's They Called Us Enemy, a full-graphic novel about Japanese individuals in relocation centers after President Roosevelt's 1942 order. They Called Us Enemy is Takei's firsthand account of those years behind barbed wire, the terrors and small joys of childhood in the shadow of legalized racism, his mother’s hard choices, his father’s tested faith in democracy, and the way those experiences planted the seeds for his astonishing future.

GILS is a reading group for K-16 educators to 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. This year’s theme is Graphic Novels in Global Context: Social Justice Through Illustration and Text. See registration for more information!

Join the French Club for Spring 2023's weekly conversation hours, on both Wednesdays and Thursdays from 5-6:30 pm!

Please join us for the film screening of What We Left Unfinished, directed by Mariam Ghani, as a part of the CMU International Film Festival.

This award-winning documentary showcases five unfinished films from Afghanistan’s communist era; the screening will be followed by a Q&A session with director Mariam Ghani, moderated by the Global Studies Center's PiNTS Scholar and Visiting Research Faculty in Afghan Cinema and Theatre Habib Sorosh. The featured director is an Afghan-American woman who is a writer, artist, and filmmaker, focusing on spaces in which social, cultural, and political structures and forces engage and take on visible configurations.

This screening is presented by the Center for the Arts in Society, the School of Art, the Kim and Eric Giler Humanities Lecture Fund, the Dietrich College Humanities Scholars Program, the Humanities Center, and CMU International Film Festival.

Join the Persian Club for bi-weekly conversations on Thursdays at 8-9 pm during Spring 2023!

Take a break from studying to order and enjoy mít khô and nước dừa in Vietnamese, चाय and चकली in Hindi, or szaloncukor and ásványviz in Hungarian! Instructors and students from the Less-Commonly-Taught Languages Center and Pitt's many language departments will teach you how to order in Swahili, German, Modern & Ancient Greek, Quechua, Hebrew, Irish, Chinese, Persian, Turkish, Arabic, Ukrainian, and many more of the nearly 30 languages offered at Pitt. Then you can place your order at the Language Coffeehouse and enjoy free drinks and snacks from around the world. Have you ever wondered what sorts of treats people enjoy in Ethiopia, or Montenegro, or Sweden, or Brazil, or how to sign your order at one of Starbucks 11 Signing Stores? Stop by the Language Coffeehouse in the WPU Assembly Room on Friday 2/17 between 11:00 and 1:00 to find out. This is the international study break you have waited a whole pandemic for!

Languages participating in the event: American Sign Language, Amharic, Arabic, Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian, Chinese, English, German, Ancient Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Irish/Gaeilge, Italian, Persian/Farsi, Portuguese, Quechua, Swahili, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese.

Take a break from studying and enjoy free drinks and snacks from around the world! Instructors and students from the Less-Commonly-Taught Languages Center (LCTL) and Pitt's many language departments will teach you how to order in Swahili, German, Modern & Ancient Greek, Quechua, Hebrew, Irish, Chinese, Persian, Turkish, Arabic, Ukrainian, English, and many more of the nearly 30 languages offered at Pitt. Then, you can place your order at the Language Coffeehouse and enjoy free drinks and snacks from around the world.

In her poem, Perhaps the World Ends Here, Joy Harjo uses the “kitchen table” as a central metaphor of life and living. The world ends here or begins here because many a history of colonialism, and botany has been told through spices and the spice trade. If spices are central to the history of colonialism, what does that mean for projects on decolonizing botany? How do we understand the history of botany through the colonial, postcolonial, settler colonial and decolonial that centers spices as pivotal points of encounter? What emerges is no easy story, but a complex set of entanglements with a set of diverse actors. Using the case of India, Dr. Subramaniam contrast two cases, the Hortus Malabaricus in the 17th century and the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) in the 21st century – as book ends to examine the politics of race and caste in the legacies of colonial and postcolonial botany. Dr. Subramaniam explores the enduring and shifting means of transnational regimes of power, of colonial administration and postcolonial governance through a melange of spices and spicy embranglements.

Bio: Professor Subramaniam received her Bachelor of Science from the University of Madras, India, and her Ph.D. in Zoology and Genetics from Duke University. Originally trained as an evolutionary biologist and plant scientist, Subramaniam’s pioneering research in Feminist Science Studies has made her a leader in the field. Her work explores the philosophy, history, and culture of the natural sciences and medicine as they relate to gender, race, ethnicity, and caste. Her latest research rethinks the field and practice of botany in relation to histories of colonialism and xenophobia and explores the wide travels of scientific theories, ideas, and concepts as they relate to migration and invasive species.

Subramaniam’s newest book, Holy Science: The Biopolitics of Hindu Nationalism (University of Washington Press, 2019) won the 2020 Michelle Kendrick Memorial Book Prize from the Society for Literature, Science & the Arts.

Are you looking to gain experience that will help prepare you for a globally-connected job market? Stop by Drop-In Hours to learn more about getting the Global Distinction added to your academic transcript, receiving special recognition at graduation, and standing out to prospective employers!

The Global Studies Center and Postindustrial, a multimedia outlet focused on reimagining industrial communities, is hosting a 4-part series that will allow a small group of students to develop journalism skills while learning about global issues in the context of Appalachia. Students will get the opportunity to learn about podcast production and journalistic writing from Postindustrial journalists that have a wealth of knowledge and experience in reporting on global issues as they relate to our region. By the end of the series, students will have the tools to produce narrative written work, created a podcast episode, and learned about other podcast production techniques. These skills will be situated in discussions about the impacts of the war in Afghanistan, slow violence, and extractive economies featuring conversations with individuals who experienced those impacts firsthand both at home and abroad. This event is solely in person.

Join REEES, NRIEP, the Department of Slavic Language and Literature, the Yugoslav Nationality Rooms, and the Feminist Press at CUNY for a talk by Ana Bakić on her most recent work, Sweetlust, at the White Whale Bookstore in Bloomfield. RSVP at the White Whale Bookstore's website.

Come and meet other CLAS students and staff!

Join Brazil Nuts for their weekly Portuguese language conversation table during Spring semester, every Monday from 4:30-5:30 pm in the Global Hub!

2022-23- MEET EU EMERGING FILMMAKER:
VIDA SHERK,
Director, Night Ride (Noćna vožnja)

This is a three-part seminar that focuses on what makes a film visually distinctive, and
how mood boards and storyboards can be used in the pre-production process to
help the director, the cinematographer, the costume designer, the art director, and
the rest of the crew envision the right atmosphere for the film - and choose the
right tools to do so.

The goal of this seminar is also to encourage even Screenwriting students to
develop mood boards for their stories, as they can be a useful tool during the
screenwriting process as well.

FEB 14, 2023 @ 10:00-11:30 AM EST- Required
PART I: MOOD BOARDS - What are mood boards, and why are they important? Can
they be useful for screenwriters (during the development phase) as well, and how?

FEB 21, 2023 @ 10:00-11:30 AM EST (2nd Half-Optional)
PART II: STORYBOARDS – How do mood boards influence storyboards? How do we
make a storyboard?

FEB 28, 2023 @ 10:00-11:30 AM EST (Optional)
PART III: THE CHICKEN OR THE EGG? WHICH COMES FIRST? Are mood boards
useful only in the later stages of pre-production? Is there even a right way to
approach the development and pre-production process, or can we shake things up
and start with the parts of pre-production which are usually reserved for the later
stages in the process of making a movie, only after a story (or script) is already set
in stone?

REQUIRED WORK: Participants will be asked to produce mood boards and
storyboards for their own projects. We will discuss their own exercises and work
during the seminar. They will also be asked to watch Vida Skerk's short film “Night
Ride” beforehand, as this film and the material made during the preparation for
this project will be used as examples during the seminar.

Join CLAS ambassadors to learn more about CLAS academic offerings and related programs.

Come and practice your Hungarian and meet others interested in the language! All levels welcome.

This is the third event as part of the series Race, Rebellion, and Global Solidarity. Black Star, Crescent Moon offers a new perspective on the political and cultural history of Black internationalism from the 1950s to the present. Author Sohail Daulatzai maps the rich, shared history between Black Muslims, Black radicals, and the Muslim Third World, placing them within a broader framework of American imperialism, Black identity, and the global nature of white oppression. Join us for a discussion with the author that will be facilitated by Dr. Michael Sawyer, Associate Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh. His work focuses on the revolutionary potentiality of Black people, and takes a multi-disciplinary approach to exploring the works that authorize, accompany, sustain, and depicts Black Being.

Want to learn about fan cultures of East Asia? Interested in the online culture of k-pop fans? What is Otaku and how does it help define Japanese fandom? This semester's lecture series will explore the fan cultures of East Asia and their influence on contemporary fan cultures across the world. In this lecture, Dr. Patrick Galbraith of Senshu University, Tokyo, will discuss Otaku fandoms.

Join the German Club for Spring 2023's weekly conversation hours, on Tuesdays from 6:30-7:30 pm!

This is the fourth event as part of the series Race, Rebellion, and Global Solidarity. Amidst the ruins of a dying order desperately trying to maintain its grip, we are living in an era marked by massive economic disparities, the rise of authoritarianism and explicit white nationalism, Black freedom movements and the calls for abolition, the normalization of the “War on Terror” and the unfinished projects of decolonization, amongst other repressive forces and insurgent voices. How did we get here? And how do we chart a course forward? This talk will explore the artists, thinkers, and movement builders who we can think with as we seek to create a world that does not yet exist. This is a hybrid event.

This talk discusses the responses of Polish authorities and wider society to two phenomena of human mobility: the
arrival of refugees from the Middle East and North Africa on Poland's border with Belarus in 2021-22, and the
arrival of Ukrainians fleeing the war on the Polish-Ukrainian border in and after February 2022. The first of these
groups encountered hostility, while the latter received a compassionate welcome. I analyze these seemingly
disparate responses with reference to the shifting politics of border enforcement in the European Union, arguing
that the technocratic model of border control that dominated EU discourse and practices in the early 21st century
has now been exhausted.

Reinhard Heinisch, University of Salzburg

Radical populism represents the greatest challenge to liberal democracy across Europe. The emergence of this phenomenon has impacted both established democracies, such as the United Kingdom, when we think of Brexit, and new democracies, such as Hungary and Poland. Populist actors have also played a role in the COVID pandemic and in the context of Russia's war on Ukraine, as they mobilize people against mainstream policies that attempt to manage these crises. Despite the general importance of populism as a political phenomenon, including at the EU level, its history and impact vary widely across Europe. It is important to understand the specific causes and effects of the success of populism because not all forms of political radicalism or authoritarianism are populist. The talk will address these questions and show that populism is closely related to the decline in legitimacy of established institutions and traditional elites in times of social and economic change. Drawing especially on the case of Austria, where radical populism has been long established, the lecture and discussion will provide an overview of this phenomenon and the state of political science research

A Workshop with Dr. Jennifer Morgan (NYU), Dr. Marisa Fuentes (Rutgers University), and Pitt's History Department Faculty. In-person and on Zoom.

Join the French Club for Spring 2023's weekly conversation hours, on both Wednesdays and Thursdays from 5-6:30 pm!

Note: French Conversation Hour will not meet in the Global Hub on Thursday, April 13.

Join the CLAS community for an evening of food and fun!

Join us on Wednesday, February 22nd at 6pm ET on CMU campus (Grand Posner Room 340) for Dr. Patrick Galbraith’s second lecture in Pittsburgh, "Erotic Comics in Japan: An Introduction to Eromanga." Dr. Galbraith will discuss Japanese freedom of expression, censorship, and Erotic Manga. He explores how increased visibility of a wide range of manga and anime, including erotic variants, has led to deepening suspicion, public outrage and calls for strengthening regulation, if not banning some content out right. Patrick W. Galbraith is a lecturer at Senshū University in Tokyo. He is the author of The Moe Manifesto: An Insider's Look at the Worlds of Manga, Anime, and Gaming, coauthor of AKB48, and coeditor of Idols and Celebrity in Japanese Media Culture.

Registration is not required for this lecture.

Join the Spanish Club for Spring 2023's weekly conversation hours, on Wednesdays from 6-8 pm!

Join the Arabic Language and Culture Club for this weekly get-together and safe space for Arabic speakers to have a conversation and work on their language skills!

Mangia con noi! Bring your lunch and chat with us! Pitt students only, al levels welcome!

Fernando Tormos-Aponte is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh and a Kendall Fellow at the Union of Concerned Scientists. He earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from Purdue University and a BA from the Universidad de Puerto Rico—Río Piedras. Dr. Tormos-Aponte specializes in social movements, environmental and racial justice, intersectional solidarity, identity politics, social policy, and transnational politics. Dr. Tormos-Aponte’s research on social movements focuses on how social movements cope with internal divisions and gain political influence. Tormos-Aponte also investigates civil society claims about the uneven government response across communities. His work in this area examines the causes and consequences of government neglect of socially vulnerable communities during disaster recoveries.

Presentation summary:

Emerging scholarship assesses the electoral consequences of climate disasters. This study contributes to this literature by evaluating the extent to which communities underserved by disaster recovery efforts punish political incumbents. Using power restoration in the US territory of Puerto Rico after Hurricane María in 2017 as a measure of government responsiveness, the study examines how government responsiveness to disasters affects subnational electoral outcomes during the 2020 elections in Puerto Rico.

Join the French Club for Spring 2023's weekly conversation hours, on both Wednesdays and Thursdays from 5-6:30 pm!

Note: French Conversation Hour will not meet in the Global Hub on Thursday, April 13.

As part of the bi-annual Consortium for Educational Resources on Islamic Studies (CERIS) Faculty Reader's Forum, this teacher workshop is for K-16 educators to follow on the February 21 CERIS book discussion on Black Star, Crescent Moon. The workshop will be led by Kate Daher, former Pittsburgh Public Social Studies Teacher and Curriculum Writer for the District. She has traveled extensively and written curriculum for African American history classes, social studies and more.

Teachers can get Act 48 credit. Register at the link provided.

Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia are often conceptualized as a single geopolitical unit. The 21st century has challenged these conceptions due to breakthroughs in technology and medicine, new regional conflicts, and the continuing effects of globalization. These transformations have molded individuals, nations, cultures, languages, and disciplines, provoking questions of identity. For our platinum conference GOSECA invites presentations exploring identity today.

This program is subject to change.

All papers will be pre-circulated and there will be no presentations. Audience members are strongly urged to read the papers by the members of the panel that they plan on attending in advance. To request access to papers, please email raja.adal@pitt.edu with your affiliation and the panel(s) that you are planning to attend. For more information, please click here.

The material history of state authority, of corporate capitalism, or of any other modern institution begins in the office. Without paperwork there is no government. But with paperwork, there also come the paper, pens, brushes, screens, drives, keyboards, and other instruments for inscribing, copying, transmitting, storing, and consuming texts. This conference seeks to trace the material history of inscription in bureaucratic cultures. In scope it covers the globe and in time, although it takes our current historical moment as a point of departure, it starts with the assumption that the very first office technology may well have been writing itself.

Methodologically, this conference brings together three roughly defined fields that have often existed in isolation: media studies, the history of writing systems, and the study of bureaucratic cultures. Fueled by the rise of electronic literature, literary theorists have joined media theorists in thinking about how transformations in the medium of writing is recasting our relationship to the text. Scholars of writing systems are also concerned with the material mediation of writing but focus on the invention and development of scripts and on the consequences of changes in their material bases. Scholars of bureaucratic cultures study the material mediation of writing in the context of institutional structures, whether corporations or government bureaucracies or otherwise, that are ubiquitous in everyday life. This conference seeks to cross-pollinate these three approaches. It asks not only how instruments of inscription from brushes to typewriters to computers have changed over time, but how their transformation relates to how power is constructed, distributed, and exerted, within the office and beyond.

We ask two central questions. First, how do instruments of inscription mediate bureaucratic practice? Does it matter if a text is written with a brush, a pen, or a typewriter? Historians have traditionally focused on the semantic contents of texts while art historians have been concerned with the formal properties of images. Can a material history of writing provide us with a vantage point from which to think about the relationship between semantic meaning and material form? This is all the more of a concern today, when we are unsure about the future of the text. As writing is de-territorialized, produced anywhere in the world, including by non-human bots, the separation of the body of the writer from the text that began with scribes and typewriters has, with fake news, brought us to the edge of a crisis of credibility. What is the future of writing? This moment, when it also seems that the written text is being supplanted by images and video, is a good time to rethink the visual, aesthetic, and material nature of writing.

The second question concerns how writing mediates our relationship to the archive. How does it matter if we see an office document in its original, as a facsimile, or as a printed reproduction? Bureaucratic documents such as laws and treaties often take multiple forms. Japanese laws from the nineteenth century to today, for example, are simultaneously printed in an official gazette and available as a unique copy with the vermillion seal of the emperor, the wet signature of the cabinet ministers, and the date and summary of the law written with a brush. Does it matter which version of the law legal scholars, historians, or anyone else uses? And what methods do we use for “reading” the materiality of a document? At a time when digital methods are allowing for the large-scale distant reading of thousands or millions of texts, can we use such methods without forsaking the materiality of the text?

Co-organized by Raja Adal (University of Pittsburgh) and David Lurie (Columbia University).
Raja Adal (University of Pittsburgh)

Stephen Chrisomalis (Wayne State University)

Andrew Glass (Microsoft Corporation)

Katherine Hayles (Duke University)

Matthew Hull (University of Michigan)

Hoyt Long (University of Chicago)

Bryan Lowy (Princeton University)

Christopher Lowy (Carnegie Mellon University)

David Lurie (Columbia University)

Brinkley Messick (Columbia University)

Mara Mills (New York University)

Lara Putnam (University of Pittsburgh)

Dennis Tenen (Columbia University)

Annette Vee (University of Pittsburgh)

Tyler Williams (University of Chicago)

Yurou Zhong (University of Toronto)

Emerging Scholars on the State of the Field, Activism, and Advocacy is the third panel in the Decolonization in Focus Series.

The Russian war in Ukraine has had innumerable impacts, from personal to political, local, national, and global. One of the many sea changes wrought by the war has been the reckoning within Slavic/Russian & Eurasian Studies over the outsized role Russia has played and continues to play in the field and what could and should be done about it. The invited panelists in this series will consider the relationships of power that have long dominated the region, how they have impacted the field of study, and what, if anything, could and should be done about it.

The series will consist of six wide-ranging panels featuring speakers from a variety of disciplines and institutions. Panelists and participants will be encouraged to consider why decolonizing Russian & Eurasian studies matters, how to implement concrete change in their classrooms, and how to conceive of the future of expertise within the field. All sessions will be convened using Zoom, live-streamed via YouTube, and recorded to be made available for later viewing.

Are you looking to gain experience that will help prepare you for a globally-connected job market? Stop by Drop-In Hours to learn more about getting the Global Distinction added to your academic transcript, receiving special recognition at graduation, and standing out to prospective employers!

Do you like books? Do you like boba? Join the Asian American Futures Collective's Books and Boba Reading Group. We're reading "Afterparties" by Anthony Veasna So. Free books available in limited quantities. RSVP at bit.ly/booksandboba1 to reserve a copy of the book and be counted for a free boba drink during the event!

The Global Studies Center and Postindustrial, a multimedia outlet focused on reimagining industrial communities, is hosting a 4-part series that will allow a small group of students to develop journalism skills while learning about global issues in the context of Appalachia. Students will get the opportunity to learn about podcast production and journalistic writing from Postindustrial journalists that have a wealth of knowledge and experience in reporting on global issues as they relate to our region. By the end of the series, students will have the tools to produce narrative written work, created a podcast episode, and learned about other podcast production techniques. These skills will be situated in discussions about the impacts of the war in Afghanistan, slow violence, and extractive economies featuring conversations with individuals who experienced those impacts firsthand both at home and abroad. This event is solely in person.

On the anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, REEES and GOSECA invite all to join us in witnessing the artwork, testimonials, and lived experiences brought about by the war.

On ‘Decentering’ and Reimagining Slavic and East European Studies from the Periphery” will be delivered by Sunnie Rucker-Chang, Associate Professor at the Department of Slavic and East European Studies at Ohio State University. Dr. Sunnie Rucker-Chang writes on racial and cultural formations, minority-majority and minority-minority relations in Southeast Europe. Her work has appeared in Critical Romani Studies, EuropeNow! - A Journal of Research and Art, Interventions: Journal of Post-Colonial Studies, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Journal of Transatlantic Studies, Slavic and East European Journal, and Slavic Review. She is currently finishing a monograph examining the politics of Blackness in former Yugoslav states that challenges conventional ideas of race and racialization in the Balkans and connects the region to broader trends in European Studies.
This is a hybrid event.

The Undergraduate Asian Studies Research Conference will be an opportunity for undergraduates at any level to meet with other students interested in Asian Studies from around the northeast U.S. Students interested in presenting will participate in panels, with speaking times between 10-15 minutes. To register for the program, students only need to provide a subject for their paper/ title and the name and email of a faculty member who can vouch for them. Students who would like to attend the conference and hear the papers are also encouraged to register. To register please click here.

Learn the history of Mărțișor and join the members of the Romanian Room committee to make your own and for your friends. Learn more about this Romanian tradition which falls on March 1 of every year during which the gifting of a red and white string attached to a small piece of jewelry or a flower is believed to bring health and luck to the wearer. Learn about mărțișoare and making them. You will also be able to purchase authentic mărțișoare, Romanian pastries, enjoy an exhibition of traditional Romanian costumes and shirts, and connect with members of the Romanian Room Committee.

The purpose of the Student Club Coalition is to give clubs related to Latin America, the Caribbean, and the diasporas, an opportunity to be officially related to and involved with CLAS, providing mutual support for student engagement. The Student Club Coalition is designed to help students develop a voice for what's important to them, to assist them in that endeavor, and to help them acquire funding for those projects and goals. The member clubs work together to support each other and their goals, and to build friendships and community along the way.

Join Brazil Nuts for their weekly Portuguese language conversation table during Spring semester, every Monday from 4:30-5:30 pm in the Global Hub!

In this session of the UCIS Career Toolkit, our guest is an editor for Yen Press with experience working with some of the biggest names in tech. Join us for this discussion of how you can find your own career in publishing and/or translation. Co-hosted by the Asian Studies Center.

2022-23- MEET EU EMERGING FILMMAKER:
VIDA SHERK,
Director, Night Ride (Noćna vožnja)

This is a three-part seminar that focuses on what makes a film visually distinctive, and
how mood boards and storyboards can be used in the pre-production process to
help the director, the cinematographer, the costume designer, the art director, and
the rest of the crew envision the right atmosphere for the film - and choose the
right tools to do so.

The goal of this seminar is also to encourage even Screenwriting students to
develop mood boards for their stories, as they can be a useful tool during the
screenwriting process as well.

FEB 14, 2023 @ 10:00-11:30 AM EST- Required
PART I: MOOD BOARDS - What are mood boards, and why are they important? Can
they be useful for screenwriters (during the development phase) as well, and how?

FEB 21, 2023 @ 10:00-11:30 AM EST (2nd Half-Optional)
PART II: STORYBOARDS – How do mood boards influence storyboards? How do we
make a storyboard?

FEB 28, 2023 @ 10:00-11:30 AM EST (Optional)
PART III: THE CHICKEN OR THE EGG? WHICH COMES FIRST? Are mood boards
useful only in the later stages of pre-production? Is there even a right way to
approach the development and pre-production process, or can we shake things up
and start with the parts of pre-production which are usually reserved for the later
stages in the process of making a movie, only after a story (or script) is already set
in stone?

REQUIRED WORK: Participants will be asked to produce mood boards and
storyboards for their own projects. We will discuss their own exercises and work
during the seminar. They will also be asked to watch Vida Skerk's short film “Night
Ride” beforehand, as this film and the material made during the preparation for
this project will be used as examples during the seminar.

Join CLAS ambassadors to learn more about CLAS academic offerings and related programs.

Join us for  Part 2 of our International Speed Friending activity!  Fun conversation activities will help international students meet American and local students and vice versa. Whether you attended the Speed Friending activity on Feb. 21 or not, everyone is welcome. Snacks will be served, and you can win prizes, too! Earn OCC credit and MyPittGlobal credit for participation.

Advance registration is requested but not required: http://bit.ly/3XXFaSZ

Monthly book club held in Portuguese. This month we will be discussing the book "Àgua funda" by Ruth Guimarães.

Sinopse:

Romance de estreia de Ruth Guimarães (1920-2014), uma das primeiras escritoras negras a ganhar destaque na cena literária brasileira, Água funda foi lançado em 1946 – mesmo ano de Sagarana, de Guimarães Rosa. Mas enquanto o escritor mineiro se valia da plasticidade da fala sertaneja para inventar um léxico novo, entre o popular e o erudito, Ruth fez aqui uma original reconstituição etnográfica da linguagem caipira – que conheceu pessoalmente em sua infância passada no Vale do Paraíba e Sul de Minas –, aproximando-a das pesquisas de Mário de Andrade.
Entrelaçando diferentes tempos e personagens, inseridos no universo de uma comunidade rural na Serra da Mantiqueira, a autora construiu uma prosa ágil e fluida, permeada de ditos populares e causos marcados pela superstição e pelo fatalismo, que antecipa em certos aspectos o realismo mágico de Juan Rulfo e Gabriel García Márquez. É o caso das histórias de Sinhá Carolina, dona da Fazenda Nossa Senhora dos Olhos d’Água, e do casal Joca e Curiango, trabalhadores locais, num arco temporal que vai da época da escravidão até os anos 1930. Como afirma o narrador do livro: “A gente passa nesta vida como canoa em água funda. Passa. A água bole um pouco. E depois não fica mais nada”.

Come and practice your Hungarian and meet others interested in the language! All levels welcome.

Join the German Club for Spring 2023's weekly conversation hours, on Tuesdays from 6:30-7:30 pm!

Join us for student-run lessons to get a handle on the basics and to connect with other future Portuguese speakers! Plus, win a prize if you attend all three sessions!