Join undergraduate Pitt students for a conversation hour to practice speaking in Hindi and Urdu and connect over shared cultural experiences.
Kya Baat Hai will meet weekly, on Fridays, during the 2024-2025 academic year, EXCEPT on the following dates:
September 20
September 27
December 20
December 27
January 3
Join us for a critical workshop titled "Local Governance and the Path to Peace in Myanmar," organized by the Center for Governance and Markets at the University of Pittsburgh. This event is a timely response to the rapidly evolving situation in Myanmar, aiming to foster discussions and strategies for resolving long-standing conflicts and building trust among diverse ethnic and regional groups in the country. This workshop will bring together scholars, practitioners, and civil society leaders, along with US-based academics and political scientists, to exchange experiences and strategies for tackling local challenges and fostering trust across ethnic and regional divides. Register here
Mangia con noi! Bring your lunch and chat with us! Pitt students only, all levels welcome!
Register to attend in-person: https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/clas/content/clas-event-registration
The history of the Soviet economy is of central importance to how scholars and activists understand the fate of state socialism in the twentieth century and how scholars and diplomats understand contemporary security concerns in Eurasia and in Europe. For the former, state socialism's failure to fulfill its liberatory promises casts doubt on any project that aims to free humanity from the burden of commodified labor and the class relations to which it gives rise. Dr. Nealy demonstrates the Soviet economy's capacity to evolve in a way that bears striking resemblance to the sorts of changes experienced by much of the industrialized world during the same period. The result is a compelling interpretation of the history of the Soviet economy that offers new answers, but also provokes new questions, about the nature of state socialism in history and the prospects for state security in the contemporary world.
About the speaker:
James Nealy received his PhD from Duke University in May of 2022. A specialist in the social, economic, and intellectual history of the Soviet Union and the world.
Join us for an enlightening guest lecture by James Welker, the author of Transfiguring Women in Late Twentieth-Century Japan: Feminists, Lesbians, and Girls’ Comics Artists and Fans (University of Hawaii Press, 2024). This groundbreaking book delves into the dynamic and overlapping communities of women and adolescent girls in 1970s and 1980s Japan who challenged traditional gender and sexual norms. The lecture will explore the ūman ribu (women’s liberation) movement, the rezubian (lesbian) community, and the world of queer shōjo manga (girls’ comics), highlighting how these groups redefined the concept of “women” by selectively appropriating Western ideas while remaining deeply rooted in Japanese culture.
Welker will provide a broad historical overview of these movements and offer insights into how acts of transfiguration reshaped what it meant to be a woman in Japan. Drawing from a vast archive of dictionaries, sexology texts, literature, magazines, comics and interviews, his book talk promises to be a rich exploration of how these communities forged new understandings of gender and sexual expression.
James Welker is a professor in the Department of Cross-Cultural Studies at Kanagawa University in Yokohama, Japan. His research focuses primarily on gender and sexuality in postwar and contemporary Japan, especially fan cultures, feminisms and the LGBTQ+ community.
