Events

Join two Pitt alumnae for a student-moderated discussion about their journeys from undergraduates to their work in Pittsburgh and Kenya. During this gathering in the Global Hub, you will hear from Founder and CEO of Kakenya's Dream, and 2023 Exemplary Leader award recipient Kakenya Ntaiya, and from Pitt alumna and Executive Director of Alliance for Refugee Youth Support and Education (ARYSE) Jenna Baron, about how these women's time at Pitt shaped their professional journeys. As we share a lite bite together, you will learn more about important skills for inspiring the next generation of changemakers and how Pitt can help you get there.
Register here: https://pitt.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_71FZ2nySjZoVzVk

Want to learn about fan cultures of East Asia? Interested in the online culture of k-pop fans? What is Otaku and how does it help define Japanese fandom? This semester's lecture series will explore the fan cultures of East Asia and their influence on contemporary fan cultures across the world. In this lecture, Dr. Jade Kim, Texas A&M International University, will discuss K-Pop online fan culture.

Join the African Languages Student Association for their March Meeting.

Daniela Fargione, Fulbright Fellow from Italy and Associate Professor of American Literature, University of Turin, Italy.
We are living at the cusp of extinction, an impending event marked by a baffling paradox: while it has mass-death proportions, it prodigiously escapes our gaze. In the backdrop of this dramatic (and seemingly invisible) contraction of bio- and cultural diversity, a whole repertoire of well-intended, even passionate narratives resort to the conventions of elegy and tragedy to foster a restoration ecology (Heise 2010). Not only do these narratives amplify the urgency to tell stories that imagine human rebirth, but they also imply potential escapes from loss and death. This complacent anthropocentric standpoint urgently calls for a reconfiguration of the ontological “exceptionality” of the human and solicits alternative, more inclusive perspectives. As a consequence, the traditional approaches to the humanities need to be reconsidered as well, including the questions that we ask about ourselves and the ways in which we explore the world to find adequate answers. What emerges is the need to rely on a novel interdisciplinarity, where scientific disciplines are in dialogue with the humanities in new and exciting ways.
Reception to Follow.

Description: Join the French Club for Spring 2023's weekly conversation hours, on both Wednesdays and Thursdays from 5-6:30 pm!
Note: French Conversation Hour will not meet in the Global Hub on Thursday, April 13.

Join the Arabic Language and Culture Club for this weekly get-together and safe space for Arabic speakers to have a conversation and work on their language skills!

Soviet ideology treated religion as an enemy, a tool of oppression and an expression of backwardness. Militant atheism, the prohibition of religious rituals, and the repression of religious communities aimed to create a secular, rational, and scientific society. Yet, religion mattered in Soviet people’s lives. And with institutional religion restricted, many people expressed their spirituality through “lived religion” - the practice of religion and spirituality in everyday lives. What were the practices of lived religion in the context of state socialism? And how did it converge and diverge with the return of institutionalised religion and spiritual lift after the collapse of communism? REEES Spring 2023 Series, Religion in (Post-Socialism) Societies, will explore the role of religion in socialist and post-socialist societies in eight online discussions on religion and its relations to repression, nation-building, indigenous cultures, and memory.
This is a part of REEES’s Spring 2023 lecture series.

APEC is an integral piece of the Biden Administration's Indo-Pacific Strategy. In this presentation, U.S. Senior Official for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APCE) Matt Murray will unpack why APEC emerged, how it works, what it has achieved, and what the U.S. as host economy aims to prioritize this year.

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.
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.
For more information and to apply, please visit: https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/creees/urs.
APPLICATION DEADLINE: January 8, 2023
Limited travel grants are available to help defray travel expenses for accepted participants located outside of the Pittsburgh region.
SYMPOSIUM: March 31, 2023