Anthony Shim | 2023 | 117 Minutes | Canada

Set in the 90s, a Korean single mother raises her young son in the suburbs of Canada determined to provide a better life for him than the one she left behind. RICEBOY SLEEPS is loosely based on the writer-director’s own upbringing. This is a fully bilingual affair that jumps decades and continents, bursting with ambition and energy, albeit in that quietly Canadian kind of way. RICEBOY SLEEPS takes a tough, hard approach to kick through the darkness. But once it breaks through that wall, the daylight bleeds in, blindingly bright.

Tickets are free with a PITT id, regular tickets $10, Non-Pitt students $5 with ID.

For more information about the film festival, click here

Chan Ching-lin | 2022 | 135 minutes | Taiwan

In Taiwanese filmmaker Ching-lin Chan’s bracing feature debut, a pigeon returns after seven years, reopening a family’s old wounds and festering resentments in a town enmeshed in the illegal pigeon racing circuit. The story revolves around a poor family dependent on its racing pigeons which is shaken by economic pressures, restless youth and the disappearance of their son. The arrival of another drifting youngster brings changes to their lives. But also heralds an approaching storm.

Tickets are free with a PITT id, regular tickets $10, Non-Pitt students $5 with ID.

For more information about the film festival, click here

Amanda Nell Eu | 2023| 95 Minutes | Malaysia, Taiwan, Singapore, France, Germany, Netherlands, Indonesia, Qatar

Zaffan (12) struggles with puberty, discovering a terrifying secret about her physical self. Her failed attempts to conceal the inevitable lead her friends to find out who she really is, and they attack her. As Zaffan is further provoked by her own community, she soon learns that embracing her true self is the only answer to her freedom.

AWARDS: 2023 Cannes Film Festival Critics’ Week Grand Prize

Tickets are free with a PITT id, regular tickets $10, Non-Pitt students $5 with ID.

For more information about the film festival, click here

The workshop introduces K-12 teachers to diverse African oral traditions, highlighting their role in shaping cultural identities and transmitting knowledge.

Hear from one of the UN's Most Influential People of African Descent, Dr. Johannes John-Langba! He is also a Pitt alum in the School of Social Work.

The UN's Most Influential People of African Descent (MIPAD) identifies high achievers of African descent in public and private sectors from all around the world as a progressive network of relevant actors to join together in the spirit of recognition, justice and development of Africa, it's people on the continent and across it's Diaspora.

Beginner Swahili students are invited to join this weekly conversation hour to practice the language outside of the classroom.

Join German Club at Pitt’s weekly meetings during Fall 2023 to converse in German and learn German culture!

The undergraduate REEES Think Tank, housed at Howard University, is hosting a panel of speakers from The Brookings Institution. The speakers will address the need for diversity in the field and what they wish they had known when they were undergrads, setting out on their careers. Q&A will focus on providing opportunities for Think Tank Student Fellows, Howard University Russian Area Studies students. and Russian Area Studies students from other schools to be able to ask questions.

This intensive, two-part program incorporates a cross-cultural homestay with individualized field study. The program is open to undergraduates of any major at the University of Pittsburgh with sufficient Portuguese language proficiency and an interest in Latin American culture. About 15 students will be selected for the program and enroll in a preparatory seminar on campus during the spring of 2024, and then travel to the host country where they will study, live with a host family, and carry out an independent field project during the summer.

Join the French Club for a conversation hour for French speaking individuals of varying levels to practice the French language.

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!

Fall 2023 Global Distinction Drop-In Hours: Tuesdays at 3:30-4:30 pm, except on October 3 and November 21.

Come practice your Hungarian and meet other people who are interested in speaking the language. All levels welcome!

FLTA for the 2023/2024 academic year, Benedict Kachietano, visits K-12 classrooms to engage and teach the Kiswahili language and foster an appreciation for Kenyan and African culture

In this Let's Talk Africa, learn about "Tomorrow's Stars" in Ghana! Providing resources for schools including learning materials, teachers, and student scholarships.

George Weir founded Tomorrow's Stars in 2003 after traveling to Ghana in 2000. Hear his story and what his organization has accomplished!

Join the French Club for a conversation hour for French speaking individuals of varying levels to practice the French language.

Join advanced Swahili students from Swahili 3 to practice the language outside of the classroom!

Note: Meetings will take place weekly in the Global Hub, during Fall semester, except on September 20 and October 18.

Join weekly Bate-Papo Portuguese conversation practice for all levels, from brand-new beginners to advanced or heritage speakers!

Note: Meetings will take place weekly in the Global Hub except on September 27, October 18, and November 1.

Join the Spanish Club meeting to learn more about opportunities to connect with the Spanish language and Spanish-speaking cultures!

Mangia con noi! Bring your lunch and chat with us! Pitt students only, all levels welcome!

Connect with Pitt colleagues and peers while you create an alebrije!

Design and make your own hand-carved copal wood animal (materials provided) as we talk about the origins and history of this unique art form.

Snacks will be provided!

This workshop is presented by the Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS) and the Center for Creativity.

Please register here: https://calendar.pitt.edu/event/alebrije_workshop_9174#

This talk offers a historical critique of the Great Green Wall Initiative of the Sahel and the Sahara (GGW) – an audacious project to stop the southern encroachment of the Sahara Desert by constructing a wall of trees across the continent. From the start, the initiative attracted scrutiny from ecologist and climate scientists who argue, rightly, that the GGW was based on the notion of a universally advancing desert border. By upstreaming, or working back in history, this talk will examine how longstanding narratives of environmental decline, deforestation, and soil erosion have been redeployed in efforts to construct the GGW. In focusing specifically on Senegal, which has already devoted significant labor and capital to the initiative, Dr. Cropper will explore how government officials and development experts have relied on ‘declensionist’ tropes – deforestation, desiccation, food scarcity – to legitimize the project, even when the science has undermined its initial aims. Put simply, he will argue that narratives of environmental decline have served as a dynamic framework to rationalize the exploitation of the Sahel’s environments and have become the fetishized commodities of a global neoliberal economy.

Dr. Ruth Mostern, Professor of History and Director of the World History Center will moderate.

This lecture considers the problem of the cultural value of political mystifications, forgeries, and appropriations. In doing so, I will focus on the historical and ideological contexts (in particular, the role of the Communist International in Moscow) of one of the most popular “songs of protest,” which was published by the American folklorist and pro-Communist activist from a Jewish-Hungarian family Lawrence Gellert’s (1898-1979) in his influential collection of African-American political songs (1936). In the 1930s, the song was translated into several languages and published in various left-wing periodicals, set to music, illustrated, performed in various countries, choreographed, interrogated by the American government as a part of “the propagandistic play,” and, all in all, embodied the anti-religious nature of a revolutionary new genre of song created by Black Americans. It eventually became an integral part of many communist singers’ repertoire (from Paul Robeson, William Bowers, and Pete Seeger to Ernst Busch). In this lecture, I show that the poem itself was both an ideological construct and a significant cultural fact which helped to introduce a new musical genre and secretly promoted the Soviet political agenda of the mid-1930s.

Please note:

The pre-screening presentation will be held at 6:30 PM in the Italian Nationality Room (CL 116) at the University of Pittsburg's Cathedral of Learning.

The film will be shown at 7:30 PM in the Frick Fine Arts Building at 7:30 PM.

Synopsis:
During World War II, the U.S Government restricted the actions and freedoms of 600,000 Italian residents of the United States. All were declared “Enemy Aliens,” and many were placed under curfew, banned from their workplaces, evacuated from their homes and communities, and even placed in internment camps.

Many of these people had been in the United States for decades, had children born in their adopted country, and had sons serving in the U.S. Military.

During that era, Italians made up the biggest foreign-born group in the country. As the Department of Justice would later say, “The impact of the wartime experience was devastating to the Italian-American communities in the United States, and its effects are still being felt.”

Interned Italians were not charged with a crime or allowed legal representation. They were subjected to “loyalty hearings” and held for the duration of the war. The United States government considered them “Potentially Dangerous,” not based on anything they had done, but on where they were born.

Most Italians refused to speak about what happened to them. Even 80 years later, many have remained silent. Until now. Hear their stories for the first time in Potentially Dangerous.

Director: Zach Baliva

All films are sponsored by the History Center's Italian American program, the University of Pittsburgh's European Studies Center, and Italian Nationality Room (part of the Nationality Rooms & Intercultural Exchange Programs). Film screenings are free to the public and will take place in the Frick Fine Arts Auditorium on the University of Pittsburgh campus.

Come practice your conversational Polish at these weekly meetings!

Since the nineteenth century, the West has targeted the Senegal River Valley as an ideal location for environmental and agricultural improvement projects. In the early 1800s, French trading companies hoped to transform the Lower Senegal Valley into a massive plantation economy – one that would replace the devastating loss of Saint-Domingue to the Haitian Revolution. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, however, French colonizers shifted their focus from agricultural to energy, hoping that the establishment of a hydroelectric dam would stimulate the colonial economy and contribute to the growth of the extractive imperial economy. And, by the turn of the 21st century, international development institutions such as the World Bank, IMF, and USAID have once again turned to the Senegal River to construct a dam, though this time to alleviate famine in the region by providing farmlands with irrigation. In each case, these improvement projects not only failed to produce their intended results, but also helped to construct the stubborn and misguided narrative that the Sahel is in a continual state of environmental decline and crisis. In examining these wayward efforts to shape the riverain environment of the Senegal River Valley, this paper explores how Western science, technology, and innovation have ignored, and in some cases undermined, local systems of knowledge that have endured extended periods of ecological and climatic changes over time.

Professor Gennady Estraikh of New York University will give the second lecture of the Socialist Studies Seminar series.

During Alumni Weekend, the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs will welcome GSPIA alumni to the Global Hub to celebrate the growth in internationally-focused programming at Pitt.

Stop by the Global Hub to learn more about the Pennsylvania Council for International Education (PACIE), a non-profit organization founded in 1969 - in part, by Pitt - that advocates for global learning across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. This event is part of the PACIE 2023 Conference. Hear from partners of the University Center for International Studies, such as ARYSE, past and incoming Presidents of PACIE, and Pitt students themselves, about why and how exposure to diversity matters, how it impacts you, and what we can do together to keep these opportunities flourishing.

As part of the Pennsylvania Council for International Education (PACIE) 2023 Conference, Pitt students are invited to join a Fireside Chat about by-youth, for-youth programming and youth-led voice.

Speakers:
Betty Cruz, President and CEO of the World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh
Nandana M., World Affairs Youth Board Member and Junior at South Fayette High School

Moderator:
Molly McSweeney, Assistant Director for Student and Community Engagement | Global Hub; PACIE Vice President and Conference Committee Chair