Register here.

Join the French Club for French language conversation practice

Portuguese conversation at all levels

Come join the German Club to practice your language skills and learn about German culture!

Multimodal (Mis)Representations of Southern Italy Overseas

Italian Fulbright Distinguished Lecture

Flavia Cavaliere
(Università di Napoli Federico II)

Posvar 4217
Masks required

Meet Global Ties mentors and learn about how you can get involved

Panoramas intern Isabel Morales will discuss Afro-Latino exclusion in Latin American labor markets. This event is open to all and we hope to see you there. OCC credit will be offered!

Read Isabel’s article: https://www.panoramas.pitt.edu/economy-and-development/addressing-racial...

What does it take to become an American? Born in Mogadishu to nomadic parents, Abdi Nor Iftin survived famine, war, and child soldiering. In an amazing stroke of luck, he won entrance to the U.S. in August 2014. Abdi shares every part of his journey and his new life in the US. As banter is heightened in congress between Reps Green, Boebert, and Omar about what it means to be an American, this timely book informs the reader of the journey of Abdi Nor Iftin from the context of growing up in the midst of a civil war, surviving life in one of the world's largest refugee settlements and moving to the US, confronting racism, and economic hardships. He provides great insight into the plight of refugees, the black, Muslim immigrant experience. In the end his story gives us hope.

Through guerrilla journalism, Abdi dispatched stories about his life to a series titled Messages From Mogadishu on American Public Media. His stories were short listed for Peabody Awards in 2016. These stories were later picked by NPR, the BBC and later This America.

20 copies of book are available to participants!

Find more information here: https://www.cerisnet.pitt.edu/event/ceris-book-discussion-call-me-american

Join the Arabic Language & Culture Club for an hour of conversing in the colloquial Arabic language while speaking on various current events.

There are four primarily active generations in today's workforce: Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Generation Y--with Generation Z just beginning to enter the workforce. Each generation comes with a unique set of outlooks, characteristics, values, and strengths. It is critical for employers to understand what motivates each generation to maintain a productive work environment. This workshop will highlight the value of intergenerational connections and contributions by focusing on what all generations can do to make the workplace more inclusive and innovative.

This workshop series is led by Hesselbein Forum Executive Coach Brigette Bethea and is open to all GSPIA students, faculty, staff, and alumi.

Register here: https://pitt.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAtd-2ppz0sGtZQQxSpxksY2seMm-XoZ5NS

Contemporary Japan seems, so often, to also make us aware of earlier history and traditions. Grandma's furoshiki, once used to wrap andcarry gifts, become chic handbags. Traditional teahouses are rendered in unusual materials like synthetic skin. Pavilions foregroundancient carpentry practices. Abandoned elementary schools become community centers. In the spirit of mottainai (never letting anythinggo to waste) and monotsukuri (making and handicraft), ludic designers sometimes hold on to obsolete objects from the past, stylishlyrepurposing them. This lecture will offer a few delightful examples of how reuse results in nostalgic reminiscence and natty revival.

Dana Buntrock is a Professor in the University of California, Berkeley’s Department of Architecture and was the Chair of the Center for Japanese Studieson campus from 2015-2020. She held the first Tomoye Takahashi endowed chair from 2017-2020 and was selected as a Distinguished Professor of the(North American) Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture in 2018. Her work focuses on interdisciplinary collaborations within Japanese architecture and construction practices, starting with her first book, Japanese Architecture as a Collaborative Process: Opportunities in a Flexible Construction Culture (London: Spon, 2000). Her second book, Materials and Meaning in ContemporaryJapanese Architecture: Tradition and Today (London: Routledge, 2010) looked at how contemporary architects like Kengo Kuma draw on Japanese traditions intheir work.

This program is brought to you by the Asian Studies Center at the University of Pittsburgh and made possible with the generous support of the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership

Social Italian event for students of Italian at Pitt

A live interview with Courtney Doucette (CUNY Oswego)

Register here: https://pitt.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_NHUQdsBpSOCFPmvW6Fallw

This book details how any administration intent on pursuing a pro-fossil policy, when Congress fails to act as a check, can change governance rules to permanently entrench oil and gas extraction and reliance in the United States and to cripple regulatory agencies. The Trump administration’s actions which violated traditional bipartisan values of economic prudence, environmental stewardship and respect for democratic norms, damaged Americans’ health, economy and governing institutions. Americans can take steps to reset the United States to a sustainable energy pathway and a more inclusive economy. Proposed legislation that combines incentives for the deployment of renewable energy with long-term investments into revitalizing fossil fuel communities enjoys strong support among voters in fossil fuel reliant regions. Government policies that correct economic-wide signals to capture climate risks creates a more level playing field for the growth of more sustainable livelihoods.

Author: Shanti Gamper-Rabindran (Ph.D. MIT) is an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research examines how political, legal and financial institutions help or hinder the energy transition in the Appalachian region and globally. She served on workshops on the governance of shale extraction in the US and abroad and published an edited volume The Shale Dilemma: A Global Perspective on Fracking and Shale Development (University Pittsburgh Press 2017). She currently serves on National Academy of Science study panel on the chemical economy.

Host: Prof. Miranda Schreurs (Ph.D. University of Michigan) is Chair of Climate and Environmental Policy at the Technical University of Munich. An expert in energy policies in the United States, Europe and East Asia, Prof. Schreurs was appointed by then Chancellor Angela Merkel as a member of the Ethics Committee for a Secure Energy Supply. She is the Vice Chair of the European Advisory Council on Environment and Sustainable Development and served on the German Council on the Environment. Prof Scheurs’ books include Energy Transformation in Times of Populism, Nuclear Waste Governance, Transatlantic Environment and Energy Politics, and Environmental Politics in Japan, Germany and the United States. She previously held professorships at the University of Maryland and the Free University of Berlin.

Book link: https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/earth-and-environmental-s...

Registration is free but we do ask for pre-registration here: https://pitt.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Qg-40zZmRViFQ06seTgniA

French casual conversation table. Open to all students of all levels of proficiency.

There are countless ways to tell a story - whether that's through writing, speaking, painting, weaving, music, and more. All of us have a unique story to tell. The What's Your Story? series, which consists of workshops on different storytelling methods that can help you share your unique identity, history, and ideas. For this workshop, we will host the Center for Latin American Studies and the University Library System with their new initiative named PanteraCartonera@PITT.

The Cartonera Publishing trend began in Buenos Aires in 2003 and was organized by writers and artists producing hand-made books at low-cost using recycled cardboard, (thus the name "cartonera"). The books are produced in a collective-circular way, in which authors become – designers become – publishers become – authors. The Cartonera phenomenon has expanded across the Americas, Europe, and Africa. Many have “recycled” the model, adapting it to their local contexts, communities, and social needs.

Join us for an afternoon of creativity and story sharing, where we will discuss the history of this movement and guide you on the making/creation of your own book. Cartonera is a very personal project in which you can design and create your own book that tells your story.

Presenters:
Martha Mantilla, Librarian for Latin American Studies
Luz Amanda Hank, Assistant Director for Partnerships and Programming, CLAS
Clare Withers, Megan Massanelli – ULS Archives and Special Collections

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/whats-your-story-cartoneras-with-panteracar...

Global Issues Through Literature (GILS)

Fall and Spring 2021-22: Imagining Other Worlds: Globalizing Science Fiction and Fantasy

This reading group for K-12 educators explores 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. Sessions this year will take place virtually on Thursday evenings from 5-8 PM (EST). Books and three Act 48 credit hours are provided.

The event on February 24, 2022 will focus on Want by Cindy Pon - https://www.cityofasylumbooks.org/book/9781481489232

This discussion will be led by Victoria Han, Master of Public and International Affairs Candidate, University of Pittsburgh, and Catherine Fratto, Engagement Coordinator, Asian Studies Center, University of Pittsburgh

This event is co-sponsored by the Asian Studies Center

Register for the reading groups here - https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/global/gils

Contact Maja Konitzer with questions at majab@pitt.edu

Join the French Club for French language practice

ADDverse+Poesia is a poetry collective that shares stories and works of art from underrepresented communities within our society - including but not limited to: the LGBTQIA+ community, Black and Indigenous individuals, and people living with disabilities.

Farsi students and those interested in the Persian language and culture can participate in language practice and cultural events

Friday, February 25th:
Keynote Speaker- 5 PM: Aneta Pavlenko, Center for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan, University of Oslo, Norway

Panel 1- 6:05 PM-7:35 PM: Language, culture, and identity in the former USSR
1. Arina Dmitrenko (University of Toronto): Empire and Urban Space: A Review of the Central Asian Space in the Russian Empire
2. Sean Nonnenmacher (University of Pittsburgh) & Emma Santelmann (University of Michigan): Reckoning with the past and negotiating a new linguistic future: Purist and moderate ideologies toward loanwords in post-Soviet Armenia
3. Timur Akishev (The University of Mississippi): Derussifying And Americanizing Northern Kazakhstan
Chair: Dr. Vladimir Padunov, University of Pittsburgh

Saturday, February 26th:
Panel 2- 11:00 AM-1:30 PM: Deconstructing the Social and the Political
1. Lukas Baake (London School of Economics): Failed deconstruction. The 1998 Crisis and the Russian Quest for Economic Reform
2. Nathan Rtishchev (New York University): The Gogol Center’s Battling Historiographies: The Twentieth Century Avant Garde’s Role in the Twenty First Century
3. Kevin Brown (University of Pittsburgh): The Crusade Against God: Bolshevism as a Secular Religion
4. Yana Lysenko (New York University): Deconstructing Post-Soviet Politics and Communal Life in the Soviet Dormitory: Symbolic Spatial Ruin in Yuri Bykov’s The Fool [Durak]
5. Mariam Shakhmuradyan (University of Cambridge): Archaeology as the Science of the Future. A Case Study: Archaeology of Armenia
Chair: Dr. Sean Guillory, University of Pittsburgh

Panel 3- 1:40 PM- 3:40 PM: Impact of Highly Skilled Migration on the Formation of New Concepts of Regionality and Geopolitical Perceptions
1. Anna Khotivrishvili: The impact of highly skilled migration on the formation of new geopolitical perceptions and concepts of regionality on the example of Georgia
2. Nicoleta-Florina Moraru: Exploring the Trajectories and Lessons of the New Russian Immigration Programme for HSM
3. Bibinaz Almanova: Educational And Highly Qualified Migrations’ Nexus: Key Trends And Approaches In Kazakhstan
4. Adam Israilov: Migration processes in the Chechen Republic and the role of highly skilled migration in 1991-1994.
Chair: Dr. Leila Delovarova, Kazakh National University

Panel 4- 4:00 PM-5:30 PM: Rethinking Balkan Identity
1. Joe Patrick (University of Pittsburgh): Constructing a Montenegrin Identity Online
2. Rexhina Ndoci (The Ohio State University): Linguistic difference as proxy for ethnic difference: The case of Albanian migrant memes
3. Patrick Gehringer (Oakland University) & Lindon Dedvukaj (Oakland University): Reevaluating Albanians Place in IE through a Historically Isolated Dialect
Chair: Dr. Ljiljana Đurašković, University of Pittsburgh

Panel 5- 5:35 PM-6:35 PM: Narratives at the Periphery
1. Fernando Alejandro Remache-Vinueza (The University of Glasgow):Changes and interactions between the mainstream narrative and alternative identities: The case of Lithuania
2. Catherine Mott (University of Kentucky): Lead Letters: An Unusual Window
Chair: Jamie Horowitz, University of Pittsburgh/GOSECA

6:40 PM: Closing Remarks

The panel will feature two special guests:

Tymofiy Mylovanov, President at the Kyiv School of Economics, Former Minister of Economics in Ukraine, Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Pittsburgh, and Faculty Affiliate at the Center for Governance and Markets

Nataliia Shapoval, Chair at the Kyiv School of Economics

The panel will be moderated by Professor Jennifer Murtazashvili.

Please register here: https://pitt.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_jrSul3T6RN6BnSlexTsG8A

Assembling diverse materials ranging from poetry to stories, wills, personal and model letters, manuals, and other miscellanea, majmu'as or anthologies offer fresh insights for writing the history of the early modern Persianate world. Often produced outside the state and religious institutions, they provide a distinct vantage point to the social and cultural history of the communities that produced them. This workshop introduces the majmu'a and explores its capacity for driving scholarly insights through a hands-on exploration of a majmu'a collected by a family of bureaucrats living in seventeenth-century Isfahan.

INSTRUCTOR: Kathryn Babayan is Professor of Middle East Studies and History at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her expertise lies in the medieval and early-modern Persianate world and focuses on the cultural, social and political histories of Iran, Iraq, Anatolia, and parts of Central Asia, Persian-speaking regions in which Islam was diversely “translated” in the processes of conversion. Professor Babayan's scholarship on the Irano-Islamic past has been inspired and broadly informed by critical innovations over the last three decades in the field of cultural studies, and ‘materialist’ modes of analysis that offer new historical approaches to the materiality of human lives as well as the remarkable range of evidentiary materials historians now employ. Her books include Mystics, Monarchs, and Messiahs: Cultural Landscapes of Early Modern Iran (Harvard Middle Eastern Monographs, 2002) and City as Anthology: Eroticism and Urbanity in Early Modern Isfahan (Stanford UP, 2021).

MODERATOR: Sahar Hosseini, Assistant Professor of History of Art and Architecture
University of Pittsburgh

Registrations limited.

Medoruma Shun is an Okinawan activist, writer, and second-generation survivor of The Battle of Okinawa. He garnered recognition for his writings when he received the Akutagawa Prize in 1997 for his short story Droplets. Many of his short stories include what has been dubbed ‘magic realism’ in which he introduces a hint of mysticism or a touch of the supernatural into stories that take place in the real world. As an activist, Shun speaks out against the many U.S. military bases that are scattered across the island of Okinawa and prevent the native people from utilizing their land and oceans. James Kotey is a second year IDMA student in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures. He received his bachelor’s degree in Japanese Language and Culture from Florida State University and served for five years in the United States Marine Corps. His research interests include translation and raising awareness for the U.S. base concerns in Okinawa.

To attend: click here

passcode: 515256

Join this panel to understand how the intersection of sexuality and gender, dis/ability, race and ethnicity, environmental politics, and urban development are shaping inequality in (post-)pandemic Eastern Europe and Russia.

MODERATOR:
Joan Neuberger, University of Texas at Austin

PRESENTERS:
Svetlana Borodina, Columbia University
Kateřina Kolářová, Charles University
Elana Resnick, University of California, Santa Barbara
Enikő Vincze, Babeș-Bolyai University

REGISTER IN ADVANCE: https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/crees/intersectionality-in-focus-spring-2022

Join us as Dr. Ruth Mostern, Associate Professor in the Department of History and Director of the World History Center at the University of Pittsburgh, discusses her book, "The Yellow River: A Natural and Unnatural History" in 4217 Posvar Hall.

Anet a Pavlenko grew up in Kiev, Ukraine, and left the USSR just before it collapsed (a coincidence, not a consequence). After a short stay in a refugee settlement in Italy, she came to the United States
and, for reasons she is still trying to comprehend, decided to get a doctorate. While in graduate school, she supported herself and her son by working as an interpreter and case worker for the Refugee
Assistance Program in Ithaca, New York. She received her Ph.D. in General Linguistics at Cornell
University in 1997. Between 1998 and 2016 she was a Professor of Applied Linguistics at Temple
University, Philadelphia and in 2014-2015 she served as President of the American Association for
Applied Linguistics. From 2017 she has been a Research Professor at the Center for Multilingualism
at the University of Oslo, Norway. Her research focuses on the relationship between multilingualism,
cognition, and emotions; forensic linguistics; and language management in imperial Russia, the USSR
and post-Soviet states. She has authored more than a hundred articles and ten books, has lectured
widely in North America, Europe and Asia and is the winner of the 2006 BAAL Book of the Year
award, the 2009 TESOL Award for Distinguished Research and the 2021 AAAL Research Article award.

Learn the history of mărțișor and watch the Romanian Room committee make them and talk about this old tradition.

Falling on March 1 of every year, Mărțișor is an old Romanian tradition of gifting a red and white string attached to a small piece of jewelry or a flower. This is believed to bring health and luck to the wearer.