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.

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.