With each global health crisis, the interconnectedness of populations around the globe becomes more pronounced. Diseases not only affect the health of communities, but they have a profound impact on political, economic, and social stability within countries and regions. This course engages the interdisciplinary nature of global health by approaching the issue through the lens of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) developed by the United Nations. The SDGs range in focus from good health and well-being to gender equality to clean water and sanitation to affordable, clean energy. By engaging the ways that health has a stake in these goals, the course will bring the expertise of faculty from the University of Pittsburgh and CMU as well as practitioners to understand and address the issue surrounding global health from a myriad of perspectives and avenues. With an applied focus, the course will assist students in engaging and advocating for a community on a global health issue through a policy memo. This iteration of the course will examine gender equality and SDG #5.
Week of February 16, 2020 in UCIS
Friday, November 1 until Sunday, May 3
Monday, February 17
Please join us for coffee, pastries, and an immersive discussion of Jewish cafe culture at the turn of the twentieth century. Dr. Shachar Pinsker, professor of Judaic and Middle Eastern studies at the University of Michigan, will talk about the convergence of cafés, their urban milieu, and Jewish creativity. Pinsker’s research uncovers a network of interconnected cafés that were central to the modern Jewish experience in a time of migration and urbanization, from Odessa, Warsaw, Vienna, and Berlin to New York City and Tel Aviv.
This language table has been moved online. Please contact Katya via Skype @katya.kovaleva1 during the usual meeting time of Monday's from 12:45PM-2:45PM OR email Katya directly (katya.kovaleva@gmail.com)
Improve and practice your Russian language skills with instructor Katya Kovaleva.
A representative from the Career Center will be hosting drop-in hours at the Hub in preparation for next week's Career Fairs. Come with your resume and any questions!
Guided by the 3Cs Counter-Cartography Collective , participants will “drift” through Pitt Library collections of maps and photographs, Carnegie Natural History Museum artifacts and the edge of Schenley Park while thinking about environmental change in Pittsburgh, and will then make critical and personal maps that reflect the experience of environmental change.
*Participation in the full series in encourages, but not required*
Register at forms.gle/zZyEsmYQkPDgjxt56
Tuesday, February 18
Please note this language table has been canceled. Please contact upittgerman@gmail.com with any questions.
Join the Pitt German Club for an hour of German conversation practice and cultural activities.
Please note this event has been canceled. Contact Shayan Jalali (shj55@pitt.edu) with any questions.
Practice your Persian language skills at our bi-weekly language table!
Wednesday, February 19
Designed for juniors, seniors, and graduate students to establish a career direction
and formulate a strategy for securing a full-time position in today's competitive
international and global workplace. Students focus on developing specific
competencies that include career selection, jobsearch activities, resume and
cover letter development, professionalnetworking techniques, behavioral
interviewing skills, and workplace ethicsin preparation for government, business,
and nonprofit sector careers. ALL ARE WELCOME TO ATTEND WORKSHOPS.
Learning Goals
This initiative emphasizes developing readiness to transition to the
workplace. The focus is on the development of self-awareness, interviewing
skills, the acquisition of job-hunting knowledge as well as the formulation
of an action plan to achieve the student's job and career goals.
Learning Outcomes
1. To clarify personal interests, values, skills
and career options.
2. To research/explore various fields for
international and global careers.
3. To create a career search strategy that
can/will be used upon course completion.
4. To present self effectively in an interview or
conversation with potential employers.
Contact Jennifer Wallace (jlw200@pitt.edu) or Bei Cheng (beicheng@pitt.edu) for specific questions.
Thursday, February 20 until Friday, February 21
Together the African Studies, Global Studies, and Russian/East European Studies Centers are organizing a career networking trip to Washington D.C. on February 20-21, 2020. Students will meet with experts and alumni in various fields in order to learn about different career opportunities and gain an insider’s perspective on the different organizations in Washington, D.C. Meetings will be arranged into four different content areas:
• Global Health
• Human Rights/Human Security
• International Security and Diplomacy
• International Development
Along with scheduled meetings at consulting firms, think tanks, non-profits, and government agencies there will be a reception to meet UCIS and Pitt alumni. Pending funding, up to forty students will be selected to go with representation from all the centers.
Thursday, February 20
Manipur & Northeast India is a region of immense geo-strategic importance that shares borders with five countries namely Myanmar, Bangladesh, China, Nepal and Bhutan. The region, home to 45 million indigenous people belonging to 272 beautiful ethnic groups has been facing the onslaught of violent conflict for the last 72 years. A martial law called the Armed Forces(Special Power)Act has been imposed in the region for the last 61 years which is a violation of basic fundamental rights.
More than 50,000 lives have been lost in the violence. 20,000 women widowed & many disappeared. The lecture will focus on one of the world's unreported and undocumented conflict and share the extraordinary efforts of decades of mobilisation and non-violent resitance methods of indigenous women of Manipur who form strong groups that patrol the streets at night with bamboo torches and other forms of unique way of resistance to bring peace in this entrenched conflict that remains unresolved till today.
Income inequality and what to do about it is a hot button political issue throughout our world. Much this disparity is the result of how the value of labor is calculated. How much is a worker's labor worth? How is it measured? Namely, how is it commodified? This live interview with Martha Lampland will discuss these questions from an unlikely place--socialist Hungary--to shed light on how economists in a society without a labor market nonetheless determined the value of labor and what this says about socialism and capitalism.
This event is part of the Socialism: Past, Present, and Future Pop-Up Course.
Please note this language table is now meeting via Zoom. Contact Julia O'Hare (jho3@pitt.edu) for more information.
Portuguese Language Table
Please note this event is now meeting online. Join via Zoom: https://pitt.zoom.us/j/466509031
Contact Benjamin Brand (bmb145@pitt.edu) with any questions.
Join professors and students from the Department of German and practice your language skills!
Please note this event has been canceled. Contact Emily Fogel (ehf11@pitt.edu) with any questions.
Practice your Hebrew at our weekly language table!
Practice your Turkish language skills - all levels welcome!
Friday, February 21 until Saturday, February 22
Friday, February 21
This language table has moved online. Contact Dijana Mujkanovic (dim31@pitt.edu) for more information.
Practice your Bosnian, Serbian, or Croatian language skills at our weekly language table.
Students from Korea National University of Education who are a part of Pitt's English Language Institute will be presenting their research posters on U.S. culture. Come by to celebrate their hard work and learn about their findings!
The Global Studies Center looks forward to beginning a monthly, informal social hour - hosted by Global Studies Ambassadors and fellow GSC students Mark, Sarah and Destiny - as a way to get to know other like-minded Global Studies students.
Please note this meeting is postponed until further notice. Contact Areti Papanastasiou (areti.papanastasiou@pitt.edu) with any questions.
Practice your Modern Greek language skills - all levels welcome!
Join Professor Robert Hellyer of Wake Forest University for a discussion on the socio-economic history of green tea in America and Japan in the late 19th and early 20th century.
Soon after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Japan dramatically expanded tea production—especially of high-quality sencha green tea—specifically to meet demand from the United States, then a green tea consuming nation. This presentation will outline that export trade highlighting how tea production helped to ease social tensions in the nascent Japanese nation-state by providing employment for Tokugawa retainers who had opposed the new central regime during the Boshin War (1868-1869). It will also explain the ways in which a change in American tastes—the 1920s’ embrace of black teas produced in South Asia—brought a decline in Japanese tea exports to the United States. Facing a glut, Japanese tea merchants aggressively marketed sencha at home for the first time, emphasizing its health benefits. As a result, more Japanese began to consume sencha, setting in motion a trend that made that type of green tea the definitive daily beverage it remains today.
Sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh National Consortium for Teaching About Asia and the Asian Studies Center, University Center for East Asian Studies
This talk introduces the social scientist and economic philosopher, Wang Yanan, and his 1930s Chinese critique of the Austrian School of Economics. Wang was an original translator of Marx, Smith, and Ricardo, and by the late 1930s, he had turned his attention to the seeming "common sense" of the Austrians in order to thoroughly refute their flat version of the world. Part of my recently published book "The Magic of Concepts" (Duke University Press 2017), this talk presents a historical consideration of capitalist economic concepts as they helped shape Chinese understandings of their simultaneously local and global worlds.
Please note this meeting is now happening online. Contact Luana Reis (lreis@pitt.edu) for more information.