Past Events

You are invited to participate in the Spring 2021 book discussion with Dr. Patrick Hughes (Religious Studies, University of Pittsburgh). John V. Tolan’s book Faces of Muhammad explores the many and various ways that Europeans (and Americans) have understood, portrayed, and interpreted the life and legacy of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam. The strength of Tolan’s book is that it shows both the negative and the positive ways that Westerners have viewed Muhammad at different times and in different contexts—from those who showed outright hostility, to others who used Muhammad for their own polemical purposes, to those who viewed him with grudging respect or outright admiration.

Join us for a virtual series of films based on the Malay folktales of a blood-sucking ghost born from a woman who dies in childbirth. The smash hit premiered in April 1957 and screened for nearly three months at the local Cathay cinemas. Its success spawned many sequels, including in 2004 and 2019. It is also said to have launched the Pontianak genre in Singapore and Malaysia, with rival Shaw producing its own Pontianak trilogy.

Join UCIS and our Emerging Global Leaders in Residence Jenna Baron ('13) and Eric Reidy ('12) for a discussion on their careers in migration and working with immigrant and refugee communities in the U.S. and abroad. This discussion is geared towards current students and recent graduates who are interested in these topics and working with these communities. If you are looking for advice on how to get started, how to decide on career paths, and how to just figure things out, please join us!
Jenna Baron is a co-founder and the Executive Director of ARYSE. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology, Global Studies, and African Studies in 2013 from the University of Pittsburgh. Jenna is a 2013 Fulbright Scholar, 2015 Humanity in Action John Lewis Fellow, New Leaders Council Pittsburgh Alumna, a board member for the World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh Urban Magnet Program, and in 2019, was recognized as one of Pittsburgh’s 40 Under 40. Jenna’s work is largely motivated by Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and believes that education can be a tool for liberation.
Eric Reidy is a journalist and the Migration Editor-at-large for The New Humanitarian currently based in Goa, India. He has reported extensively on migration in the Mediterranean as well as on humanitarian aid work and anti-migrant vigilante groups at the US-Mexico border and the effort to document crimes and push for accountability in Syria’s civil war. Eric's work has taken him to Lebanon, Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia, Sudan, Niger, Italy, France and Greece, among other countries. He graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a BPhil in International and Area Studies and History in 2012.
Register here: https://pitt.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0uduqppjouGtRUtM5zJhf-oeqeL3qR9RLL

In Conjunction with the Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures program's "Ten Evenings" series, GSC is hosting "Four Evenings" pre-lecture discussions that put prominent world authors and their work in global perspective. Open to series subscribers and the Pitt Community, these evening discussions, conducted by Pitt experts, provide additional insight on prominent writers and engaging issues.
With Girl, Woman, Other, Bernardine Evaristo became the first Black woman to win the Booker Prize for Fiction. The novel is a magnificent portrayal of the intersections of identity, across generations, in a group of Black British women. Girl, Woman, Other is a polyphonic and richly textured social novel that reminds us of all that connects us to our neighbors, even in times when we are encouraged to be split apart. The twelve central characters of this multi-voiced novel lead vastly different lives. From a nonbinary social media influencer to a 93-year-old woman living on a farm in Northern England, these unforgettable characters also intersect in shared aspects of their identities, from age to race to sexuality to class.

The Symposium, DEMOCRACY UNDER DURESS, will explore the fragility of the democratic state and strategies for creating and protecting a true democracy.
The Keynote Address will start at 1:30 p.m.
The Symposium will also feature two panels:
10:30 – 11:45 a.m.: “Walter Rodney, Human Rights and Decolonization”
12:00 – 1:15 p.m.: “Imperialism, State Violence and the Assassination of Walter Rodney”
Walter Rodney (1942-1980) was a historian, intellectual, scholar-activist, educator, pan-Africanist, and revolutionary. His scholarly works and political activism engendered a new political consciousness, challenged prevailing assumptions about African history, provided a new construct for development theory, and established a framework for analyzing current global socio-economic and political issues.
Rodney & Davis’ lives intersected when they met at the University of Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania; they are both grounded in historical truth, and in their commitment to human dignity, liberation, resistance, and scholar-activism.

Since its release in 1992, Candyman (directed by Bernard Rose) has become a pillar of Black horror through its representation of how the trauma of racism is carried down from one generation to the next. 2021 will see the release of a reimagined Candyman, or—as it has been described, a “spiritual sequel”—to the 1992 film, which itself spawned two sequels in the 1990s. With Jordan Peele producing and Nia DaCosta directing, the remake will belong to an emerging canon of Peele-helmed projects that explicitly reinscribe race and racist violence against Black Americans through the horror genre. Unlike the original films, the remake is helmed by two Black filmmakers, and will contribute to an ongoing cultural redefinition of horror as depicting the experience of racism from the perspective of minority creators at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement.
To mark this timely and much-anticipated adaptation, this event will consist of a virtually-hosted panel discussion of the original Candyman franchise and the upcoming remake (the release of which is currently on hold due to COVID), moderated by one of the Horror SIG co-chairs. Attendees are invited to screen the film(s) independently ahead of the official event.
Our panel of experts includes Professor Robin R. Means Coleman (author of Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films From the 1890s to Present), Dani Bethea (editor, We Are Horror Zine; writer, Ghouls Magazine & Gayly Dreadful), Professor Dawn Keetley (project manager of Horror Homeroom), and Jon Towlson (author of Candyman, a monograph).
Sponsored by the Horror Studies Working Group at the University of Pittsburgh, the Department of Screen Cultures at Northwestern University, and the Department of Arts at Northumbria University. Hosted by the SCMS Horror Studies Scholarly Interest Group.

Join us for a reading and conversation with acclaimed horror poet Linda D. Addison. The conversation will focus on her biography and path to success, her role as a mentor, her approach to horror and poetics and the intersection of content and style, and feature a reading and discussion of her poetry. Linda D. Addison is the author of five award-winning collections, including How To Recognize A Demon Has Become Your Friend. She is the first African-American recipient of the Horror Writers Association’s (HWA) Bram Stoker Award and has also received the HWA Lifetime Achievement Award, HWA Mentor of the Year Award, and Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association Grand Master Award.