The University of Pittsburgh's Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, the European Studies Center, and the Graduate Organization for the Study of Europe and Central Asia join Yale University's Macmillan Center to host the 2026 REEESNe Student Conference. This FREE student conference will bring together undergraduate and Master's-level students from the northeast and beyond. The event will feature panels of student research papers, roundtables for presenting student experiences (study abroad, internships, volunteering, etc.), and a professionalization panel with alumni, who apply REEES expertise in a diversity of careers.

Application Deadline: December 12, 2025

Join Brazil Nuts in the Global Hub for weekly Bate-Papo Conversation Hours to meet other students and to practice Portuguese of all levels!

Bate-Papo Conversation Hours are every Monday during Spring semester, starting January 26 and ending April 20.

Hosted by Brazil Nuts

UPDATE: Bate-Papo's meeting on January 26 has been postponed due to weather.

Join the German Club for weekly meetings on Mondays in the Global Hub to practice German and share about German culture! 

Hosted by the German Club

Join us for our weekly Global Distinction Drop-In Hours on Tuesdays from 3-4 pm in the Global Hub! Come learn how to gain experience that will help prepare you for a globally-connected job market, get the Global Distinction added to your academic transcript, receive special recognition at graduation, and stand out to prospective employers.

Join us for two engaging Spanish mini-lessons focused on travel vocabulary, conversation skills, and cultural insights. No experience needed! Food will be provided for the second lesson!

March 17th - Introduction to Spanish

Marh 24th - All about Travel 

Led by CLAS Ambassadors: Rose Flores and John Trabulsi

Join the French Club on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 6-7 pm during Spring semester for conversational meetings and to practice French speaking and listening skills and create a francophone community on campus!

Hosted by the French Club

*Lecture in Portuguese with consecutive translation*

Register to attend. Lunch is provided. 

Oceanógrafa com mestrado e doutorado em Arqueologia pela Universidade de São Paulo (MAE/USP) e especialista em História da África e do Negro no Brasil (UCAM). Possui ampla experiência em pesquisas voltadas ao Patrimônio Cultural, à Arqueologia Histórica, Arqueologia de Ambientes Aquáticos e à Arqueologia Afrodiaspórica. Atualmente é Diretora de Projetos Arqueológicos no Instituto AfrOrigens e, também coordena e executa, junto a Perfil Arqueologia e Patrimônio Cultural, projetos de avaliação e gestão do patrimônio arqueológico no âmbito do Licenciamento Ambiental, com ênfase em contextos costeiros e subaquáticos. Sua trajetória alia rigor científico e engajamento social, orientando-se pela construção de uma Arqueologia comprometida com a valorização das comunidades tradicionais e com o enfrentamento aos apagamentos e silenciamentos das narrativas negras.

REFLECTIONS ON THE DURA EUROPOS SYNAGOGUE PAINTINGS:

The Annual Israel Heritage Room Lecture
CO-SPONSORS- JEWISH STUDIES PROGRAM
ISRAEL HERITAGE ROOM Committee of the Nationality Rooms and Intercultural Exchange Programs
5:30 pm - 7:00 pm
In 244/45 CE, a small Jewish community in Dura Europos, located at the edges of the Roman and Sasanian empires, commissioned a stunning series of biblically-themed wall paintings to adorn the walls of their synagogue. Following the Sasanian sack of Dura, the synagogue was abandoned and forgotten, until its rediscovery by archaeologists in the 1930s and subsequent reinstallation in the National Museum in Damascus. Weaving in reflections from her recent trips to Syria, this talk will explore the incredible biblical subject matter in the Dura synagogue paintings and their
later reception in both Damascus and Pittsburgh. Jill Joshowitz is a scholar of Jewish visual culture in the late antique Eastern Mediterranean and the author of Visual Exemplars: The Art of Biblical Figures in Jewish Art and Literature in Late Antiquity (Brill, 2025). She has curated exhibitions for Jewish cultural institutions throughout the United States including the Maltz Museum, Museum of Jewish Heritage, and the Yeshiva University Museum.

Join the French Club on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 6-7 pm during Spring semester for conversational meetings and to practice French speaking and listening skills and create a francophone community on campus!

Hosted by the French Club

What a night! Our Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant, Higgin Joseph @its.me.awuor, represented CAS and Africa at Pittsburgh Science and Technology Academy's Multicultural Night on March 25.

The evening was a beautiful celebration of culture, community, and connection from countries around the world. We are so proud of Higgin for sharing the richness of African culture with the Pittsburgh community!

Join the Arabic Club in the Global Hub every other Wednesday during Spring semester, starting January 28, to practice Arabic language, structured by varying geographic dialects and level of speaker proficiency!

Hosted by the Arabic Club

Please join us for an end of Ramadan Celebration for Muslim students, faculty, and staff. Stop by for lunch and share your Eid traditions and Ramadan experience. All are welcome!

Hosted by Pitt's Muslim Faculty & Staff Affinity Group

Mangia con noi! Bring your lunch to the Global Hub every Thursday to chat with the Department of French and Italian and practice Italian!

Tavola Italiana will meet every Thursday during Spring semester, from January 15 to April 23, EXCEPT on January 29, February 5, February 12, and March 12.

Hosted by the Department of French and Italian

Join the Center for African Studies on Thursdays to practice conversational Swahili in a social environment.

Please register to attend. Lunch is provided starting at 12:15 PM. 

This presentation is in conjunction with the LASPP Dissertation Workshop. 

Abstract: This study examines two novels written by Black intellectuals during the first decades of the post-abolition era in Brazil. The first is the historical novella *A Nova Aurora* (1913), authored by Astolfo Marques (1876–1918); the second is titled *Vencidos e Degenerados* (1915), written by Nascimento Moraes (1882–1915). Both texts were published in the city of São Luís do Maranhão, located in Brazil’s agrarian North. Each in its own way, both books constitute interpretations—viewed from the country’s periphery—of the emergence of contemporary Brazilian society, a society founded upon free labor and republican institutions. In this sense, these works of fiction can be read as "documents" of a specific social experience. This point is particularly relevant in the Brazilian context, given that historical and sociological research regarding the end of slavery in the country frequently grapples with a scarcity of narratives—whether oral or written—produced by free Black individuals or enslaved persons who lived through the abolition process. Yet, we must ask ourselves: what kind of "document" is this? How does it preserve and generate knowledge? My argument is that these novels function as a form of "counter-archive" across three dimensions: 1) the perspective through which they portray and engage with factual reality, thereby challenging official chronologies; 2) the manner in which they conceptualize and imagine history—specifically, how they interrelate events and arrange them within the narrative—ultimately constructing a particular "sense" of history; and 3) the fictional representation of how society is organized, how its various social groups are constituted, and the processes by which they undergo transformation. This final point is among the most significant, for it is here that fiction generates historical knowledge that transcends—and extends beyond—mere "factual" data. In this work, they demonstrated the manner in which the chosen novels realize each of these three dimensions in a particular way. 

Matheus Gato de Jesus is a professor in the Department of Sociology at Unicamp. He is the coordinator and researcher of the Afro Nucleus/CEBRAP. He holds a master’s and doctorate from the University of São Paulo. He was a visiting researcher at Princeton University and Harvard University. He is currently a visiting researcher at the Du Bois Center at the University of Massachusetts. He is the author and editor of several books and articles whose main themes are: racism, racial classifications, racial violence, Black intellectuals, literature, and post-abolition. He is the author of O Massacre dos Libertos: sobre raça e república (Editora Perspectiva, 2020), winner of the award for best scientific work from the National Association for Research in Social Sciences (ANPOCS) and a finalist for the Jabuti Prize.

Pitt students: Join Kya Baat Hai, a Hindi-Urdu conversational club that practices language and celebrates South Asian culture, for weekly conversation hours!

The Slavic Languages and Literatures Department wants to introduce students to the Slavic spring rituals though a media-focused lens.

What holds together conflicting lineages of law and medicine? Is it the history of their encounters? The everyday practices carried out in their name? This paper considers these questions by pursuing contrasting concepts of "dignity" in a West Bengal hospital's palliative care unit, during a fraught period - August 2024 - when doctors and nurses were pulled between protest and medical practice.

Dr. Sarah Pinto is Professor of Anthropology and Department Chair at Tufts University. Since receiving her PhD from Princton University in 2003 her research has considered childbirth, infant mortality, and birth-work in Uttar Pradesh, India, noting the way reproductive health interventions reiterate caste and the marginalization of Dalit women; women's movement through psychiatric care settings in urban north India and the intersections of kinship dissolutions with crisis and care; and histories of psychiatry and psychoanalysis in South Asia as they pertain to women's lives and gendered diagnoses, notably "hysteria" and its avatars.

The African Graduate Student Union presents Pan-Africa Gala: Ubuntu!

Feel the beat of Africa! The end-of-year celebration is almost here, and you should be there!

Friday, March 27, 2026 | 5:30 PM
Assembly Room, William Pitt Union

Get ready for an unforgettable evening of:
* African games & traditions
* Food tasting & dinner
* Dance & musical performances
* Best dressed competition
* And lots more!

We'll also be introducing our newly elected AGSU Executive Team. A milestone moment for our community!

Tickets are FREE, but seats are limited, so RSVP now! Scan the QR code on the flyer or click https://tinyurl.com/UbuntuAGSU

Dress code: African Cultural. Come dressed to impress!

Supported by Pitt Graduate & Professional Student Government

See you on the dance floor!

The Sakthi Folk Cultural Centre in Tamil Nadu, India, led by two progressive Tamil Catholic nuns, uses Tamil folk arts to build self-esteem and economic skills among young Dalit women (formerly known as outcastes or untouchables). Sakthi reclaims the degraded parai frame drum to re-humanize and empower the young women through the physical embodiment of confidence in performance and a regenerated cultural identity in a complex campaign against gender, class, and caste subjugation.

Join ASC for this joint event with local partners from Duquesne University, Carnegie Mellon University, the Fulbright Association, and Kelir Books. Sakthi Vibrations, an ethnomusicological documentary directed by Dr. Zoe Sherinian, seeks to reveal and analyze Sakthi's outstanding model for Dalit women's development, integrating folk arts performance with social analysis, microeconomic sustainability, self-esteem, and community development.

Dr. Sherinian is Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Oklahoma. She is an accomplished scholar in Tamil folk music, Dalit liberation theology, and intersections of gender and caste. Along with the featured documentary, she has also produced This is A Music: Reclaiming an Untouchable Drum (2011).

Supported by the Greek Nationality Room and Indian Nationality Room committees. March 27-29, 2026, 7pm

The ACTR (American Council of Teachers of Russian) of Western Pennsylvania Olympiada of Spoken Russian is an annual national competition provides US school and college students the opportunity to demonstrate their Russian language knowledge while meeting other students of Russian and conversing with native Russian speakers. Students will receive recognition for their demonstrated language proficiency, improve their chances of getting international and study abroad scholarships, and enhance their professional résumé.

Questions? Please contact Anna Karpusheva (ank490@pitt.edu)

Please register at the link here before February 27th, 2026.

Co-Sponsors:

University of Pittsburgh, Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies and Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures

Carnegie Mellon University, Department of Modern Languages

11:00 AM- Urban Farmers and Green Spaces: Berlin’s Lessons for Pittsburgh

Dr. Jesko Hirschfeld, Humboldt University of Berlin
Urban farming in Pittsburgh took off around 2005 but has roots reaching back to the community gardens established in the 1940s. Berlin, by contrast, has incorporated various forms of urban gardening into its cityscape for nearly 200 years.
What insights can Pittsburgh draw from Berlin’s long history of urban farming? And what perspectives might Pittsburgh’s more recent initiatives offer to urban growers in Berlin?
In this engaging talk, Dr. Jesko Hirschfeld highlights innovative gardening initiatives, from classic allotments to new community-driven models. Explore how urban green spaces strengthen neighborhoods, improve climate resilience, and expand access to fresh food—while also confronting challenges like gentrification and shrinking public funding.
Join us for a lively look at how urban farmers shape healthier, greener cities.

1:00 PM- Part I: Panel Discussion
Moderator: Randall Halle, European Studies Center
Panelists:
Dr. Patrick Shirey — University of Pittsburgh
Lisa Freeman — Freeman and Family Farm
State Representative Emily Kinkead, PA House District 20, Chair of the Legislative Hunger Caucus
Dr. Jesko Hirschfeld — Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

2:30 PM- Part II:  Discussion Groups:
Group A: Urban Farming Challenges & Opportunities
Group B: Climate resilience strategies in cities
Group C: Ensuring nutrition security for vulnerable populations

3:30 PM-Part III:  Call for Action with Closing Remarks

Join the Vietnamese Student Association for a Vietnamese Food Workshop to spread Vietnamese culture.

Location
The Frick Art Museum and the University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning
Cost:
$35 Member
$45 Adult
$45 Senior (65+)
$20 Youth (3-17)
$20 College Student (w/ ID)

Members of The Frick Societies receive complimentary admission
Description:
Co-presented by The Frick Pittsburgh and the Nationality and Heritage Rooms at the University of Pittsburgh, this special program studies immigration, culture and labor in Pittsburgh through time. Beginning with a visit to the Nationality and Heritage Rooms, classrooms gifted from the ethnic communities who helped build Pittsburgh, and ending with a tour of the Lewis Hine Pictures America exhibition, this program will take attendees back in time to discuss the rich cultural fabric of Pittsburgh.

Advanced registration and pre-payment required. Program begins at University of Pittsburgh, Cathedral of Learning; participants are responsible for their own transportation. Click here to find additional information including directions and parking at the University of Pittsburgh.

This event is also being offered on April 10 and May 14.

https://www.thefrickpittsburgh.org/Event-Guided-Tours-of-the-Nationality...