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.

Due to economic development and globalization, cities continue to grow with predictions that 70 of the world’s population will live in urban areas by the year 2050. This course, then, will view cities as hubs where patterns, connections, discussions, and the processes shape such issues as social justice, economic development, technology, migration, the environment among others. By examining cities as a lens, this sequence of weekend courses encourages students to examine cities as a system for discussing social processes being built and rebuilt. With an interdisciplinary focus, the course invites experts from the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon, and relevant fields more broadly.

Due to economic development and globalization, cities continue to grow with predictions that 70 of the
world’s population will live in urban areas by the year 2050. This course, then, will view cities as hubs
where patterns, connections, discussions, and the processes shape such issues as social justice, economic
development, technology, migration, the environment among others. By examining cities as a lens, this
sequence of weekend courses encourages students to examine cities as a system for discussing social
processes being built and rebuilt. With an interdisciplinary focus, the course invites experts from the
University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon, and relevant fields more broadly.
This iteration of the course will explore such topics as: the influence of multinational corporations on
cities; the rise of privacy issues in relation to adoption of technology within cities and homes; the
replacement of human labor and access to employment; the role of technology on urban planning,
among others.
One-credit for PITT students / 3 units

Mavra by Igor Stravinsky. Conducted by John McKeever and Directed by Alyssa Weathersby. March 28th at 8PM and March 29th at 2 PM. Pay what you can.

Prometheus Resurrected: The London Protocols 1827-1830. A Celebration on the 199th Anniversary of the Greek Revolution (1821) and the 190th Anniversary of the Liberation of Athens and Attica (1830). A program by the Greek Room Committee in honor of France, England and Russia through the French, English, and Russian Nationality Room Committees at the University of Pittsburgh.

Celebrating the friendship of France, Russia, Great Britain, and Greece in the rise of the modern Greek nation through the London Progtocols of 1827-1830 imagined in poem, song, and music.

A light reception with wines from the Attica region of Greece will be offered following the Program.

This event has been canceled

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.

In her presentation, Dr. Williams will explore the advent of faith-based maternity homes in Nigeria since the early 1930s and how they adapted to socio-political and biomedical trends in their search for legitimacy. Various scholars have examined relationships between ethnomedical practitioners, biomedicine, and the state; even fewer have extended this conversation to practices of divine healing in Africa. Notwithstanding, there has been little exploration of religious birthing institutions that increasingly play vital roles as primary maternal healthcare providers. By examining Faith Homes and their socio-political search for legitimacy in colonial and post-colonial Nigeria, Williams reflects on the enduring connections between religion and medicine in Africa.

Ogechukwu Williams is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Department of Medical Humanities at Creighton University, Omaha NE. Her book project examines the intersections between biomedical maternities, traditional midwifery, and faith-based birthing institutions in Nigeria. She is co-author of Writing the Nigeria Biafra War.

Part of FRIT's Week of Francophonie. A talk on French Rom-Coms by Dr. Mary Harrod.

Part of FRIT's Week of Francophonie. Come see the students from the French Theatre Workshop rehearse L’Ecole des femmes.

This event will be in French.

104 years since the Japanese state formally designated a standard spoken language, Edwin Everhart argues that standardization is still an active process. Focusing on language of the Touhoku region, Everhart describes how some language users resist the hegemony of standard language and the discourse that local dialect is obsolescent, ugly, or backward. Drawing on ethnography, interviews, and archives of "language activists" from the last thirty years, he argues that this resistance can be understood in terms of the techniques and metaphors that activists use to legitimize their local language. In many cases, these rhetorical tools—for example, emphasizing the deep historical roots of dialect—are the same tools used in national language standardization. This duplication reveals part of why projects of national and local identity can be equally elusive: they rely on exclusion and erasure.

Dr. Edwin K. Everhart is a Center Associate at the University of Pittsburgh Asian Studies Center. He received his Ph.D. from UCLA in 2018, and has had his research funded by the Social Science Research Council’s International Dissertation Research Fellowship. His research addresses dialect and accent discrimination in Japan and the United States.

To join this online lecture, please visit: https://pitt.zoom.us/j/570506078

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.

Part of FRIT's Week of Francophonie.

Quebecois Author Ms. Wilhelmy discusses The Body of the Beasts, her book on animality and humanness. The event will be in English.

Please join us!

There will also a public book event on Wednesday, April 1 at The White Whale Bookstore in Bloomfield. 7 pm.

Hosted by the Dept. of French and Italian, with support from the Year of Creativity, the Honors College, and the Humanities Center.

Questions? Contact Prof. Kaliane Ung

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.

Part of FRIT's Week of Francophonie. A screening of the Franco-Senegalese drama film. The film is in French w/ English subtitles.

Postponed until the Fall!
The Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS) is pleased to present the Spring 2020 Latin American Film Series. This series was curated by Luciana Lemos, a Brazilian GSPIA student with experience organizing independent film festivals. The topics vary from gender issues, water rights, and ethnicity in Latin America and the Caribbean to Latinx identity and a reflection on the tensions between parental roles and public duty.

The films will be screened approximately twice per month, though the end of the spring semester. Doors open and pizza is served at 6 p.m., and screenings will start at 6:30. Stick around after the screening to participate in a discussion with actors, producers, directors, and faculty. Films will be screened at either 4130 Wesley W. Posvar Hall or the Frick Fine Arts Auditorium.

For more information on upcoming films, email us at clas@pitt.edu

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!

Part of FRIT's Week of Francophonie. Come create a modern bestiary with Audrée Wilhelmy. This event will be in French.

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.

UCIS International Career Toolkit Series presents an online event:
Ryan Stannard - Regional Recruiter, Peace Corps​
Former Teacher Collaboration and Community Service Volunteer
​
Join in via Zoom:
Wednesday, April 1st, 2020
3:00-3:50pm, Information Session

Join Zoom Meeting:
https://zoom.us/j/9238996364

Meeting ID: 923 899 6364

We are opening up the UCIS Professional Development Class to offer additional students to take part online and learn from Ryan. Ryan will discuss his current and prior work in the Peace Corps, requirements for future employees, and key strengths and skills he seeks in Peace Corps applicants. He'll also answer questions.

Please sign up online at:
https://signup.com/go/cTtOnmN

Questions?
Angela Illig
ami17@pitt.edu

The Call of The Sirirí: Birds, Humans, and Sound in Post-Agreement
Colombia

Via Zoom at 4pm: pitt.zoom.us/j/469033895

After the signature of the peace agreement between the Colombian Government and the FARC-EP guerrilla in 2016, different Colombian institutions have promoted avitourism, a form of eco-tourism based on birdwatching, as an economic activity that can revitalize local economies after decades of conflict. International institutions and NGOs have pointed out that avitourism simultaneously generates income, empowers local communities, and encourages the conservation of fragile ecosystems. However, avitourism also relies on an epistemology of sound imbricated in notions of difference that separates nature and culture, a binary that allows the commodification of biological diversity to fuel neo-extractivist “green industries.” This presentation introduces an analysis of Ana Maria Romano’s “El Suelo Desde el Viento” and Edson Velandia’s “El Cli-Cli-Clí de Paro” to explore an alternative epistemology of sound connecting culture and nature, human and nonhuman, who coexist in a way that one becomes a part of the other. Such study presents the Colombian case to explore the limits and biases of the uses of notions such as biodiversity within neo-extractivist economies in the Global South, while points to the necessity of understanding and respecting the meaningful ways how different peoples interact with the nonhuman beings around them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Juan Fernando Velasquez is a Postdoctoral Scholar at Michigan Society of Fellows and Assistant Professor in the Department of Musicology in the School of Music, Theatre & Dance at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He also holds a Ph.D. in Musicology with certificates in Latin American and Cultural Studies from the University of Pittsburgh and an MA. in Musicology of the University Eafit, from Medellín, Colombia. His articles have appeared in journals like Latin American Music Review and the Boletín de Musica de Casa de las Américas, and his book “Los ecos de la villa: La música en los periódicos y revistas de Medellin (1886-1903)” won the fellowship for research in Culture by the Municipio de Medellín (2011).

Among other recognitions, he has received the Fulbright-Mincultura fellowship for Colombian Artists (2012), the Tinker Fellowship (2015), the Andrew Mellon Predoctoral Fellowship (2017), and an honorary mention in the Otto Mayer-Serra Award (2018). His new project, “Remapping Urban Sounds: A Cultural and Social History of Music, Sound, Listening, and Urban Modernization in Colombia (1886-1930),” studies sound’s relationship to urban modernization in postcolonial contexts by analyzing questions about privilege, modernity, and ecologies of sound in postcolonial Colombia.

Contact Jennifer Wallace (jlw200@pitt.edu) or Bei Cheng (beicheng@pitt.edu) for specific questions.

Part of FRIT's Week of Francophonie.

A public book event on Wednesday, April 1 at The White Whale Bookstore in Bloomfield.

Hosted by the Dept. of French and Italian, with support from the Year of Creativity, the Honors College, and the Humanities Center.

Questions? Contact Prof. Kaliane Ung

As part of the ESC's Year of Memory and Politics Series, we will hold a screening of The Silence of Others. The film reveals the epic struggle of victims of Spain’s 40-year dictatorship under General Franco, who continue to seek justice to this day. Filmed over six years, it follows victims and survivors as they organize the groundbreaking “Argentine Lawsuit” and fight a state-imposed amnesia of crimes against humanity, in a country still divided four decades into democracy.

Following the screening, a panel discussion will be held featuring Pablo Fernandez-Vazquez (Department of Political Science), Cristina Blanco Sío-López (Marie Sklodowska Curie Senior Global Fellow), and Jae-Jae Spoon (Department of Political Science).

Part of FRIT's Week of Francophonie.

Come and make couscous and petits-choux at this Cooking Workshop! This event will be held in French.

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!

There has been a resurgence of the Left since the 2008 Great Recession. A class-based politics, dormant for so long, has finally returned to mainstream political discourse. But what is this Left? What are its goals, possibilities and limitations? How will it organize itself for the politics of the 21st century? This live interview with Jodi Dean will discuss her book trilogy that provokes us to rethink and even revisit the Left with a renewed vision of communism, a efficacy of the political party, and the ethics and spirit of comradeship.

This event is part of the Socialism: Past, Present, and Future Pop-Up Course.

Please note this event has been canceled. Contact Emily Fogel (ehf11@pitt.edu) with any questions.

Practice your Hebrew at our weekly language table!

Part of FRIT's Week of Francophonie.

Pause Cafe and Board Games in Language Media Center! There will also be delicious crêpes as well... And don't forget the raffle!

This event will be in French.

Practice your Turkish language skills - all levels welcome!

Please note this meeting has been canceled. Please contact Ceara McAtee at ckm30@pitt.edu with any questions.

Irish language and culture club

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.

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!

Please note this meeting is now happening online. Contact Luana Reis (lreis@pitt.edu) for more information.

Papers are welcome from students - both undergraduate and graduate – from all disciplines on topics including (but not limited to) politics, culture, society, policy, religion, and their impact on the lived experience of Muslims and their multifaceted interactions. This symposium looks to shed light on various expressions of Islamic and Muslim narratives and experiences in a global, historical or contemporary context.