Georg Sparber is Ambassador of the Principality of Liechtenstein to the United States of America since 2021. He also serves as Liechtenstein’s Permanent Observer to the Organization of American States.
Before assuming his current duties, he held the position of Deputy Permanent Representative of Liechtenstein to the United Nations in New York since January 2017. His portfolio included disarmament, peace and security and political issues.
Light refreshements will be proivded
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.
During this session of our Conversations on Europe, we will focus our discussion on the ongoing election campaign to the European Parliament, as the elections will take place between June 6th and 9th. With a looming economic slowdown, increasing migration both on the southern and eastern border of the EU, and growing support for populist and nationalist parties, what are the prospects for EU integration? What are the main topics of the campaign, and how will they impact the elections? Which parties will gain a majority in the upcoming five-year term and shape the future of the EU?
Moderators:
Jae-Jae Spoon, University of Pittsburgh
Zeynep Somer-Topcu, The University of Texas at Austin
Panelists:
Kai Arzheimer, University of Mainz
Catherine DeVries, Bocconi University
Jan Rovny, Sciences Po-Paris
TED GOOSSEN is a literary translator, professor emeritus of Japanese literature at York University in Toronto, and a founding editor of MONKEY New Writing from Japan. His recent work includes Dragon Palace (MONKEY imprint, 2023) and The Third Love (Granta, 2024), both by Hiromi Kawakami.
SAM MALISSA holds a PhD in Japanese literature from Yale University. His translations of stories by Kyōhei Sakaguchi appear in every volume of MONKEY.
MOTOYUKI SHIBATA is a literary translator and professor emeritus of American literature at the University of Tokyo. He is the founder of the Japanese literary journal MONKEY and MONKEY New Writing from Japan. He has translated Paul Auster, Stuart Dybek, Brian Evenson, Laird Hunt, and Kelly Link, among others.
MEG TAYLOR edits Japanese literature in translation. She is the managing editor for MONKEY New Writing from Japan. She studied Japanese literature with Howard Hibbett at Harvard University and has spent most of her career in trade publishing.
DAVID BOYD teaches literary translation at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He is known for his award-winning translations of Hiroko Oyamada and Mieko Kawakami,
among others. His translation of Takaoka’s Travels by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa will be published in May 2024 under the MONKEY imprint withStone Bridge Press.
Please join PittGlobal for a celebration of the Sheth International Achievement Awards as we honor our 2023 recipients:
Dr. Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, 2023 Sheth Distinguished Faculty Award for International Achievement recipient
Dr. Peace A. Medie, 2023 Sheth International Young Alumni Achievement Award recipient
Join us in celebrating the accomplishments of these prestigious global leaders at an in-person awards ceremony.
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!
Join Global Experiences Office Peer Advisors for this weekly roundtable in the Global Hub! Bring your questions about study abroad programs!
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!
Join weekly Tavolina (a separate gathering from Tavola Italiana) to
practice Italian. This is an Italian conversation table aimed for beginner
and intermediate speakers.
Join us for a conversation between Hiromi Kawakami, in town from Tokyo for only two days, and the Pittsburgh-based author Adam Ehrlich Sachs.
HIROMI KAWAKAMI is one of Japan’s most popular novelists. Many of her books have been published in English, including Manazuru, The Nakano Thrift Shop, Parade, Record of a Night Too Brief, Strange Weather in Tokyo (shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2013), and The Ten Loves of Nishino. She has won numerous Japanese literary awards, including the Akutagawa Prize, the Tanizaki Prize, the Yomiuri Prize, and the Izumi Kyoka Prize for Literature. People from My Neighborhood, translated by Ted Goossen, was published in 2021. Dragon Palace, also translated by Ted Goossen, was published under the MONKEY imprint in 2023. Her work appears in every issue of MONKEY New Writing from Japan.
ADAM EHRLICH SACHS is the author of three books: Gretel and the Great War, The Organs of Sense, and Inherited Disorders. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, n+1, and Harper’s, and he was a finalist for the Believer Book Award and the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. Aoko Matsuda translated five of his stories from Inherited Disorders for the Japanese MONKEY (Spring 2018); for the same issue, she wrote a story in response to his work, which was translated into English by Polly Barton as “A Father and His Back” and published in MONKEY New Writing from Japan (2022).
Join weekly Swahili Class 2 students for weekly conversation hours this
Spring semester, to practice Swahili outside of the classroom.
Come practice your conversational Hungarian with students of all levels!
Hear from Pitt Slavic Alumni Dr. Olga Kim, in the 2024 Pitt Slavic Alumni Lecture!
Join weekly Bate-Papo Portuguese conversation practice for all levels,
from brand-new beginners to advanced or heritage speakers!
Join the University of Pittsburgh’s Alliance for Learning in
World History & the Global Studies Center for a series of
workshops about using History for the 21st Century (H21)
modules in the classroom. The H21 project offers complete
modules for introductory world history classrooms that include
student readings and primary sources, lesson plans, instructor
guides, and discussion, activity, and assessments suggestions.
Xin Wang is a curator and art historian based in New York. A PhD candidate in Art History at New York University, writing a dissertation on Soviet Hauntology, she held curatorial and educational positions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, and received the Warhol Foundation's Arts Writers Grant in 2021. Publications such as "Asian Futurism and the Non-Other" have been widely translated and taught in university curriculums. She has served on jury panels for The Shed, the Creative Capital Grant, and Anonymous Was a Woman, as well as a regular visiting critic at Yale University's MFA program in Photography. She served as the Chief curator of the 4th art and technology-themed biennial program - titled "To Your Eternity" - at Beijing's Today Art Museum in Fall 2023.
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!
Mangia con noi! Bring your lunch and chat with us! Pitt students only,
all levels welcome!
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.
Karibuni! Are you interested in learning some conversational Swahili? Join us for a three part mini-series taught by our advanced Swahili students! Topics include introductions, bargaining, food, and more. We hope to see you there!
Register via Handshake for this info session to learn more about the different scholarship programs that can jumpstart your career in the U.S. Department of State's Foreign Service.
David Greene, award-winning journalist and former co-host of NPR’s Morning Edition, Shannon Reed, author and frequent contributor for The New Yorker, and Sean Guillory, host of The Eurasian Knot weekly podcast and producer of the award nominated Teddy Goes to the USSR podcast, will co-teach this hands-on course where students will work as a team to research, write, and produce a broadcast-quality audio narrative telling the stories of people around the world who have come to the University of Pittsburgh with the support of the Pittsburgh Network for Threatened Scholars. The focus of the course will be production of an audio narrative, but along the way, students will gain meaningful experience in collaboration and communication, archival research, interviewing and oral histories, script writing, sound editing, and other skills. Course enrollment is limited. No previous experience with interviewing or podcasting required, but students with demonstrated interest in the topic (Threatened scholars/human rights) or who participated in the Fall 2023 Art of the Interview Masterclass are particularly encouraged to sign up for the course.
A political activist and opposition figure for two decades, Aleksei Naval’nyi has espoused controversial, even at times (2007-08) xenophobic views, but became a beacon of social and political change both within the Russian Federation and internationally. In the Russian Federation, he was recognized as Politician of the Year by the Russian business daily newspaper Vedemosti in 2017 and again in 2019. In October 2021, he received the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for human rights and was nominated for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize by members of the Norwegian members of parliament, with an Internet petition to the Nobel Committee signed by over 38,000 people.
Join us for a streaming of the 2022 documentary, Navalny, followed by a moderated discussion with Dmitry Bykov, a critic and journalist who was poisoned under similar circumstances to Naval'nyi.
Join Addverse Poesia, an international and multilingual poetry group
that discusses, reads and translates poems in at least 4 languages, for
their weekly meetings!
David Greene, award-winning journalist and former co-host of NPR’s Morning Edition, Shannon Reed, author and frequent contributor for The New Yorker, and Sean Guillory, host of The Eurasian Knot weekly podcast and producer of the award nominated Teddy Goes to the USSR podcast, will co-teach this hands-on course where students will work as a team to research, write, and produce a broadcast-quality audio narrative telling the stories of people around the world who have come to the University of Pittsburgh with the support of the Pittsburgh Network for Threatened Scholars. The focus of the course will be production of an audio narrative, but along the way, students will gain meaningful experience in collaboration and communication, archival research, interviewing and oral histories, script writing, sound editing, and other skills. Course enrollment is limited. No previous experience with interviewing or podcasting required, but students with demonstrated interest in the topic (Threatened scholars/human rights) or who participated in the Fall 2023 Art of the Interview Masterclass are particularly encouraged to sign up for the course.
