Events

As a collaborative partnership between the Allegheny County Bar Association and the Asian Studies Center, the Comfort Women: The Legacy of Sexual Slavery in Asia conference will focus on the historical and legal aspects of sexual enslavement of women by the military in the years before and during World War II. Reaching beyond the actual historical events, the conference will explore the reasons for the long silence and how performance practices—protests, tribunals, theater, and memorial building projects are used to demand justice for those who suffered the state-sponsored acts of sexual violence both in Asia and here in America. The conference provides the framework for understanding how actions designed to bring about redress can shift from the legal aspects to its cultural and social possibilities.

For details on Friday's activities, please see here.

On Saturday, Dr. Peipei Qiu (Vassar College) and Dr. Joshua D. Pilzer (University of Toronto) will speak on the history and legacy of comfort women, and Dr. Monica Eppinger (St. Louis University) and Dr. Mary McCarthy (Drake University) will speak on the legal challenges and the role of diplomacy in the matter of comfort women. Following a lunch, there will be a screening of Herstory (Min Kyu-dong, 2018), a film chronicling the 1991-1996 trials which led to the first case of reparations to former comfort women.

Come attend a captivating screening of three short firms that poignantly and candidly depict modern Asian family life!
The lens through which each of use sees "family" is unique to our own personal experiences and is strongly influenced by the cultures in which we live.
After the screening, Meghan Hynson from the Department of Music will do a hands-on demonstration and talk on the indonesian angling, a small portable bamboo rattle that is pitched to the Western scale and played by shaking.

Natalie Koch, Associate Professor of Geography, Syracuse University. Why do autocrats build spectacular new capital cities? Dr. Koch considers how autocratic rulers use "spectacular" projects to shape state-society relations, but rather than focus on the standard approach - on the project itself - she considers the unspectacular "others." The contrasting views of those from the poorest regions toward these new national capitals help her develop a geographic approach to spectacle. Join us for this upcoming book talk by the author, with a response from Mrinalini Rajagopala, Associate Professor, History of Art and Architecture

CESS 2018 : October 24-28, 2018 at the University of Pittsburgh

The Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies and the Graduate School for Public and International Affairs are pleased to host the 19th Annual Conference of the Central Eurasian Studies Society. Join over 300 scholars and professionals from around the globe for a conference, spanning five days of workshops, panels, forums, exhibits, and special events.

For more information about the program, see https://www.cess.pitt.edu/program.

Free and Open to the Public during Hillman Library Hours

The term Silk Road, coined by 19th century German explorer Ferdinand von Richthofen, refers to a loose network of overland trade routes stretching from the Mediterranean to East Asia. Textiles, gems, spices, animals and even religions were all exchanged along this vast expanse, starting around 1,000 B.C. and continuing for millennia. For much of this time, most Silk Road traders coming from western Eurasia were Muslim, and they brought their beliefs and rich culture to millions of people.

A Crossroads of Ideas

While the Silk Road was a two-way route, most of its movement was eastward, carrying Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and later, Islam.

By the 8th century, Muslims stopped thinking of religion geographically and began seeking converts along the Silk Road. The benefits of conversion to such a widespread religion were many, as Muslims preferred trading with other Muslims.

Islamic scientific and medical advancements also had significant impact on Silk Road travelers. Chinese Buddhist traders adopted Islamic medical knowledge in wound healing and urinalysis. Muslims brought India their insights on astronomy, including a skepticism of the geocentric universe.

Cultural Exchange Along the Route

Influences from Buddhist China and other regions also affected radical changes in Islam. In the 12th century, abstract Islamic art suddenly started depicting human figures, long considered forbidden in Islam. Murals showing Buddhist statues and Indian narrative artwork started appearing in mosques, and Islamic art exploded with new techniques and figures. Chinese technologies, such as paper production and gunpowder, were transmitted to the West. Iran’s art in the Mongol period (13th and 14th centuries) is dramatically influenced by Chinese artistic traditions.

The Exhibit Design

The ground floor cases in Hillman Library feature a map of the Silk Road from its Eastern terminus in the Chinese city of Xian to its western terminus in Constantinople. They also display the late-14th century Catalan Atlas, the most detailed world map of its time, showing key places along and major figures who traveled the overland route of the Silk Road. The exhibit continues on the second floor of Hillman Library in five thematic display cases:

*Horses and Dynasties: Cartography and Painting in China, 10th-14th Centuries,
*Alexander the Great, Kublai Khan, and Marco Polo: Confluences of Power and Exchange in Assia,
*Musical Encounters in the Deserts and Mountains of Central Asia,
*Explorations in Turkestan: Aurel Stein and Bamiyan, and
*New World Exploitation and the China Trade with Europe.

Author Ann McClellan will explore the images and tales associated with the ethereal Japanese cherry blossoms. People have celebrated the blooming of these trees for more than 1000 years, and today they serve as instruments of diplomacy, as landscape enhancements, and as eternal signs of spring and romance.

Ann McClellan is the author of two definitive books about the Japanese cherry blossoms including the official book of the National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, DC.

Global Health: Health and Well Being:PS 1903/29734
This course will examine food insecurity and malnutrition as a part of a larger discussion on how to ensure healthy lives and well-being for all ages. Sustainable Development goals 2 and 3 will be the primary focus of the course.The course is for 1 credit and will run Friday November 2- Sunday November 4 2018

Dr. Oni is a visiting professor at Robert Morris University this fall. He specializes in Sociology of Education. His area of research focus includes; social problems in education, Social change in education, social deviances/social disorganizations in education with particular focus on students’ secret cult in Nigeria.

Various locations, see full program at: ucis.pitt.edu/esc/events/sbragia-symposium.

Laura Brueck, Chair, Asian Languages and Cultures Department; Associate Professor of South Asian Literature and Culture at Northwestern University

Will be presenting to the University of Pittsburgh, Global Studies Center.

Dr. Brueck specializes in modern and contemporary Hindi literature, with a particular focus on literatures of resistance, popular literatures, and translation studies.

Salmaan A. Keshavjee, Associate Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Presenting to University of Pittsburgh

Dr. Keshavjee's research spans four areas: (1) multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) treatment and policy; (2) health-sector reform and access to health care and medical technology in transitional societies, with a special focus on countries of the former Soviet Union (Central Asia and the Russian Federation); (3) the role of non-governmental organizations in globalization and the formation of trans-border civil society; and (4) modernity, social institutions, civil society, and health in the Middle East and Central Asia. In addition to being an active clinician, his methodological expertise is in ethnography, participant-observation, and qualitative interview techniques.

Patricia Ehrkamp, University of Kentucky Department of Geography
Presenting to University of Pittsburgh

Dr. Ehrkamp's research considers how immigration changes contemporary European and U.S. American cities and polities. She has argued that in order to understand immigrant geographies research needs to consider how immigrants and non-immigrant residents in cities of the United States and of Europe create spaces of everyday life, and how these new spaces of everyday life shape wider debates about citizenship, belonging, inclusion and exclusion. Her recent work on debates about minarets and mosque construction projects in Germany and Switzerland examines how understandings of secularism, religion, and gender shape contemporary liberal democracies in Europe.

The Soyuz Research Network for Postsocialist Cultural Studies is an interdisciplinary forum for exchanging work based on field research in postsocialist countries, including Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, Africa, East and Southeast Asia, and Latin America. Soyuz is an interest group of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and an official unit of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES). The Soyuz symposium has met annually since 1991 and offers an opportunity for scholars to interact in a more personal setting. More information on the Soyuz Research Network can be found at http://soyuz.americananthro.org/symposium/.

The Undergraduate Research Symposium is an annual event since 2002 designed to provide undergraduate students, from the University of Pittsburgh and other colleges and universities, with advanced research experiences and opportunities to develop presentation skills. The event is open to undergraduates from all majors and institutions who have written a research paper from a social science, humanities, or business perspective focusing on the study of Eastern, Western, or Central Europe, the European Union, Russia, or Central Eurasia. The Symposium is held on the University of Pittsburgh-Oakland campus. After the initial submission of papers, selected participants are grouped into panels according to their research topics. The participants then give 10- to 15-minute presentations based on their research to a panel of faculty and graduate students. The presentations are open to the public.