Events

Deadline: The Journey from Pitt to the World: A Student-Moderated Discussion with Alumnae Changemakers
- Molly McSweeney
- 5:00 pm to 6:00 pm
- Global Hub
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

Film: Film Screening and Q&A: Compensation
- 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm
- Frick Fine Arts Cloister and Auditorium
Compensation, the first feature by award-winning filmmaker Zeinabu irene Davis (Cycles and A Powerful Thang), presents two unique African-American love stories between a deaf woman and a hearing man. Inspired by a poem written by Paul Laurence Dunbar, this moving narrative shares their struggle to overcome racism, disability and discrimination. An important film on African-American deaf culture, Davis innovatively incorporates silent film techniques (such as title cards and vintage photos) to make the piece accessible to hearing and deaf viewers alike, and to share the vast possibilities of language and communication.
An ASL interpreter will be present at the event and there will be a Q&A/discussion with director Zeinabu irene Davis and screenwriter Marc Chery after the film (moderated by Professor Liz Reich). Refreshments provided!

Lecture: Asia Pop Lecture Series: K-Pop Online Fan Cultures
- Dr. Jade Kim
- 6:00 pm
- 5201 W. W. Posvar Hall
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.

Conference: High School Euro Challenge Competition
- Samantha Moik
- 9:00 am to 12:00 pm
- Global Hub
As the European Studies Center welcomes high school students for this event, the Global Hub will serve as a space to welcome these students to the University of Pittsburgh, and to allow them to learn more about international and global opportunities at Pitt and interact with Pitt students. The award announcements will take place in the Global Hub starting at 11:30 am.
Welcome, high schoolers, and Pitt students, please stop by to say hello!

Lecture: We and “the Unloved Others”: Stories of Distinction
- Daniela Fargione, Fulbright Fellow from Italy and Associate Professor of American Literature, University of Turin, Italy
- 1:30 pm
- 501 Cathedral of Learning
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.

Student Club Activity: French Conversation Hour
- Tristan Cavaness
- 5:00 pm to 6:30 pm
- Global Hub

Conference: 26th Annual Latin American Social and Public Policy Conference
- (All day)
The 26th Annual Latin American Social and Public Policy Conference (LASPP) will be held from March 30-April 1, 2023. The Call for Papers will be released during the Fall semester.
For over 25 years, the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Pittsburgh has welcomed researchers from around the world to discuss social and public policy. LASPP creates spaces where the scientific community can discuss the past, present, and future of Latin America and the Caribbean. In order to be inclusive and lower barriers for scientific exchange, papers may be presented in English, Spanish, and/or Portuguese.
To learn more about the LASPP conference, visit: https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/clas/laspp

Lecture: Secret Police Archives as Depositories of Faith
- Anca Sincan, Tatiana Vagramenko, Sean Guillory
- 12:00 pm to 1:30 pm
- Zoom
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.

Lecture: APEC 101 with Matt Murray
- Matt Murray
- 4:00 pm to 5:30 pm
- 4130 Posvar Hall
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.

Student Club Activity: French Conversation Hour
- Tristan Cavaness
- 5:00 pm to 6:30 pm
- Global Hub

Symposium: European and Eurasian Undergraduate Research Symposium - 2023
- (All day)
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

Presentation: Intersectionality and Female Migrants: Exploring employment in global Muslim, female migrant communities
- Jasmine Al Rasheed, BPhil Candidate
- 9:00 am
- Zoom & In Person (School of Public Health, Room 6140)
Come and see BPhil candidate Jasmine Al Rasheed as she presents and defends her thesis. Jasmine explored the impact of intersectional identity in employment experiences of global, female Muslim migrant communities. She conducted a case study in Pittsburgh, interviewing members of the community and compared her findings with research done in the EU. Her research examines gender and religious identity in migrant communities.

Panel Discussion: Decolonization in Focus Series (Panel VI) The Future of SEEES Expertise: How Can We Anticipate Tomorrow’s Differences?
- Serhy Yekelchyk, Ararat L. Osipian, Ilya Gerasimov, Juliet Johnson
- 12:00 pm to 1:30 pm
- Zoom
The Future of SEEES Expertise: How Can We Anticipate Tomorrow’s Differences? is the sixth and the last panel of the Decolonization in Focus Series.
The Russian war in Ukraine has had innumerable impacts, from personal to political, local, national, and global. One of the many sea changes wrought by the war has been the reckoning within Slavic/Russian & Eurasian Studies over the outsized role Russia has played and continues to play in the field and what could and should be done about it. The invited panelists in this series will consider the relationships of power that have long dominated the region, how they have impacted the field of study, and what, if anything, could and should be done about it.
The series has six wide-ranging panels featuring speakers from various disciplines and institutions. Panelists and participants will be encouraged to consider why decolonizing Russian & Eurasian studies matters, how to implement concrete change in their classrooms, and how to conceive of the future of expertise within the field. All sessions will be convened using Zoom, live-streamed via YouTube, and recorded to be made available for later viewing.
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