This is a 1 credit course. Please contact Luis G Van Fossen Bravo if you are interested.

Come meet international students, make friends, practice conversational English, and have fun together, during these weekly discussion groups coordinated by the English Language Institute. Feel free to bring your lunch :)

Join the French Club for conversation hours, on Mondays & Thursday at 5-6 pm during Spring 2024, for French speaking individuals of varying levels to practice the French language.

IES Study Abroad Drop-In Advising

Interested in studying abroad with IES? Join us to learn more about IES study abroad programs and get your questions answered.

Date: Tuesday, January 30th
Time: 10am-12pm, 2pm-3pm
Location: Global Experiences Office, 810 William Pitt Union

This talk from Pitt's Graduate School of Public and International Affair's Center for Governance and Markets presents a political theory of governance of cultural diversity developed in Sadr's book, Negotiating Cultural Diversity. It argues that a pluralistic society should forge a balance between three key elements: individual autonomy, counter-homogenization measures, and intercultural dialogue.

Contemporary societies are increasingly facing a tremendous challenge in terms of finding social cohesion. A major challenge comes from disagreement over the issues related to social justice and other fundamental principles and ethical issues that should govern our societies. The challenge compounds when these disagreements intertwine with group and cultural identities such as race, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation. This leads to a conflict between individual rights such as freedom of speech, freedom to practice religion, or equal opportunity with group or community preferences. A theory of governance of diversity should not only present a solution on how to peacefully accommodate deep differences, but should also present a way out on how to adjudicate disagreement between universal values and particularistic aspirations.

Join this workshop that is part of the Balkan Culture (SLAV 1850) class, where you will learn how to prepare Balkan coffee!

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!

Spring 2024 Global Distinction Drop-In Hours: Tuesdays at 3:30-4:30 pm.

Yun-Oh Whang's opening Keynote for the Identity, Inclusion, and Information: The AANHPI Experience Conference.

The University of Pittsburgh observes AAPI month during January (instead of May), this conference seeks to celebrate and acknowledge what it means to be a person of AANHPI heritage at Pitt. An examination at the challenges people of AAPI descent face in Pittsburgh and a recognition of their 'belonging'.

A panel discussion on 'belonging' for AAPI members of the University of Pittsburgh, and the general Pittsburgh community.

Moderated by Katelan Hudson, this panel will discuss the effects a lack of sense of belonging has had on their mental health and experiences with a goal of moving forward with proposed solutions. From this panel, participants will develop an understanding of the AAPI experience in higher education, the importance of targeted efforts towards cultivating belonging for AAPI students, and how to be an ally to these efforts.

Join German Club at Pitt’s weekly meetings, on Tuesdays at 6-7 pm during Spring 2024, to converse in German and learn German culture!

Mai Khôi is an award-winning singer, composer, and activist. She rose to stardom in 2010 after winning the Vietnam Television Song and Album of the Year awards as one of the first female songwriters in Vietnam. As a pop star, Khôi released seven albums in genres of Vietnamese pop and dance, and made regular nationally televised performances. Several years later she became increasingly uncomfortable having to submit her work to government censors and, thinking she could reform the system from within, nominated herself to run in the National Assembly elections on a pro-democracy platform. Her campaign sparked a nationwide debate about political participation and culminated in a meeting with Barack Obama in May 2016. Her activism came at a high price, however: she had her concerts raided, was evicted from multiple residences, and was detained and interrogated by the police.

Khôi’s artistic transformation is evident in Mai Khôi Chém Gió, a genre-splicing dissident trio she founded in 2016 that combines protest music with free jazz and lost musical traditions of Vietnam’s hill tribes. She also went on to participate in Seaphony, a project that aims to create the first pan-Southeast Asian orchestra comprised of ethnic minority musicians, as a conductor, arranger, and composer. Her current project, Mai Khôi and the Dissidents, is an eclectic and experimental jazz-ish quintet that’s as likely to launch into a noisy protest song or collective improvisation as a lullaby or love ballad. She is also developing an autobiographical multimedia stage show called “Bad Activist” that combines original music, projections, archival footage, and storytelling to fiercely advocate for democracy and freedom of expression in Vietnam and around the world.

Since 2019, Mai Khôi has lived in exile in the USA. In 2019, she was a resident artist at SHIM:NYC, and in 2020, she was awarded an Artist Protection Fund Fellowship in cooperation with the University of Pittsburgh, City of Asylum, and the International Free Expression Project. Mai Khôi was an Exiled Writer and Artist in Residence at City of Asylum in Pittsburgh from 2020-2023; she has continued to reside in Pittsburgh after the conclusion of this residency.

In recognition of her work at the intersection of art and activism, Khôi has been awarded the 2018 Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent and the 2022 Four Freedoms Award for Freedom of Speech.

Join weekly Tavolina (a separate gathering from Tavola Italiana) to practice Italian. This is an Italian conversation table aimed for beginner and intermediate speakers.

In the spring of 2024, the World History Center’s Global Appalachia working group and the Global Studies Center will host a series of book discussions focusing on the region of Appalachia from a global perspective. The series theme is Interdisciplinary Perspectives on a Region in Motion. Participation in all three events in the series is not required but encouraged. All events will take place from 1:00-2:30pm (EST). Copies of the books will be available for those planning to attend the event.

In Ramp Hollow, Steven Stoll offers a fresh, provocative account of Appalachia, and why it matters. His investigation, ranging widely from history to literature, art, and economics, questions our assumptions about progress and development and exposes the devastating legacy of dispossession and its repercussions today.

Join weekly Swahili Class 2 students for weekly conversation hours this Spring semester, to practice Swahili outside of the classroom.

International Education is an exciting and growing professional field to pursue regardless of your area of study! Join our panelists to discuss their unique career paths, the diverse opportunities available in International Education, and the work happening in the field. There will be a Q&A following the panel.

Panelists:

Tiffany Martin: Events & Travel Manager, Duolingo

Leslie Ann Smedley: Senior Advisor & Program Manager, Pitt’s Global Experience Office

Vanessa Sterling: Director of Health & Safety, CET Academic Programs

Jeff Whitehead: Executive Director of Global Engagement, Pitt’s University Center for International Studies

Molly McSweeney, moderator, Assistant Director for Student and Community Engagement, Pitt's Global Hub.

Come practice your conversational Hungarian with students of all levels!

Human Rights Amid Violent Conflict: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Events in Israel and Gaza is a panel discussion that will try to provide an academic space and context for those seeking to think and learn, as we are all witnessing heart-breaking violence and response in Israel and Gaza. Our goal is to offer academic contexts and input for thinking about the current moment, asking each forum participant to speak about: What sets of academic knowledge and frameworks are you drawing on as you follow the news from afar? What scholarly expertise can help us understand better the complexity of actors, institutions, interests, and international structures shaping events on the ground and what happens next?

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

Screening of Out of State (2017), Ciara Lacy, a documentary focusing on the lives of several Native Hawai'ian inmates of a private for-profit Arizona prison. It's an intimate look at tradition, home, and self.

Shipped thousands of miles away from the tropical islands of Hawaii to a private prison in the Arizona desert, two native Hawaiians discover their indigenous traditions from a fellow inmate serving a life sentence. It's from this unlikely setting that David and Hale finish their terms and return to Hawaii, hoping for a fresh start. Eager to prove to themselves and to their families that this experience has changed them forever, David and Hale struggle with the hurdles of life as formerly incarcerated men, asking the question: can you really go home again?

Join Spring 2024 Kya Baat Hai weekly conversation hours, on Wednesdays from 7-8 pm, for students to practice speaking in Hindi and Urdu and connect over shared cultural experiences!

CIEE Study Abroad Drop-In Advising

Interested in studying abroad with CIEE? Join us to learn more about CIEE study abroad programs and get your questions answered.

Date: Thursday, February 1st
Time: 10am-12pm, 2pm-4pm
Location: Global Experiences Office, 810 William Pitt Union

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

Join Angela Alonso (University of São Paulo) for our second Speaker Series event! Angela will present her research in "The mosaic protest cycle: state-social movements dynamics and the 2013 Brazilian case". This event will be presented in English. Light lunch provided! Please register using this link: https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/clas/content/clas-event-registration

This event will be in English.

Join the French Club for conversation hours, on Mondays & Thursday at 5-6 pm during Spring 2024, for French speaking individuals of varying levels to practice the French language.

The impact of Russia’s war against Ukraine can be felt far outside the actual battlefield. Modern war disproportionately affects gender and sexual minorities, something we are seeing in Ukraine even as Putin's anti-LGBTQ+ agenda seeks to relentlessly drive support for the war at home. How can a queer-studies focus advance conversations about decolonization in East European and Eurasian Studies? To address this question, Queer Focus will have six virtual panels featuring speakers from various disciplines and institutions. Panelists and participants will explore how gendered regimes were constitutive of Russo-centric relationships of power, defining the region and how we study it, as we collectively grapple with what it means to re-examine our current research, teaching, and institutional practices.

Peter Thilly is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Mississippi and author of The Opium Business: A History of Crime and Capitalism in Maritime China. He is currently working on a transnational history of the 1853 Small Sword Uprising, tentatively entitled "Small Sword, Big Trouble."

In 1870s China, opium was a legal item of trade. It was also one of the most commonly smuggled goods, and the target of intense contestation between business and government elites. This talk will explain how the people who bought and sold opium made themselves indispensable to the late Qing Self-Strengthening movement. It will examine the opium business in the age of legal opium, and demonstrate how the tax-farming arrangements launched in the late 1850s came to support the late Qing fiscal-military state in an uneven way, by providing essential funds to the local state while also embedding wealthy opium traders in positions of unchecked power.