Events

In this third installment of the 2022 Global Issues Through Literature Series (GILS), educators will convene to discuss Kate Evans' Threads: From the Refugee Crisis, a full-graphic novel of the refugee drama addressing one of the most pressing issues of modern times to make a compelling case, through intimate evidence, for the compassionate treatment of refugees and the free movement of peoples.
GILS is a reading group for K-16 educators to literary texts from a global perspective. Content specialists present the work and its context, and participants brainstorm innovative pedagogical practices for incorporating the text and its themes into the curriculum. This year’s theme is Graphic Novels in Global Context: Social Justice Through Illustration and Text. See registration for more information!

Environmental history and nature-writing have captured both scholarly and public interest as evidenced by the number as well as the quality of recent publications. The proliferation is doubtlessly the result of the urgency of the climate crisis and environmental destruction and social, political, and cultural anxieties stemming from them. Within the academy especially, research on environmental history is flourishing; scholars have been examining new themes and possibilities for studying environmental change and its complex entanglements with the human world. In the last several years, scholars have expanded the scope of environmental research, which now ranges from narratives centering on various environments and topographies such as rivers or permafrost to animal farming in the context of twentieth-century politics and the role of technology such as photography in making nature an important part of colonialist discourse.
This symposium aims to gather scholars whose work touches on different aspects of the cultural and social history of the environment in Southeast and East Europe and the Middle East. Broadly conceived, the region forms a part of the former Ottoman domains and the historical treatment of the region has been overwhelmingly through the lens of political history and top-down approaches. In recent years, though, a number of historians embraced environmental approaches, producing in turn excellent studies on a range of topics, from climate history and its impact on societies to empire and resource management, particularly of water. Inspired by this scholarship, the symposium seeks to emphasize the environment as a powerful discursive force at the intersection of cultural, religious, and intellectual history. Therefore, its core concern is to explore and formulate new questions, themes, and approaches regarding the role of the environment in shaping different imaginaries as well as modes of belonging and identity, of history and cultural and political categories and hierarchies.

This talk discusses the foreign support for the symbol of an Ottoman-era bridge in the tiny Bosnian village of Žepa, which the US Embassy in Sarajevo paid $62,000 to reinforce in 2016. The bridge is not of much importance to the local population. There is a memorial in the village of Žepa, which was widely considered one of the "safe spaces" for Bosniaks that the Bosnian Serb Army took in July of 1995, as no massacre occurred there. Ignoring the memorial that is important to them, as emblematic of foreign involvement in Bosnia during and since the 1992-1995 war.

Join the Indian Nationality Room Committee at the University of Pittsburgh as they present a celebration of India's Republic Day with an afternoon of food, dance performance, and short film that highlight Indian culture. Free event; food will be available for a nominal fee. Space is limited to 150 so please register if you wish to attend.
To register, please click here.

The revolutionary prospect of socialism inspired homosexual emancipation and the growth of toleration toward same-sex relations in the first quarter of the twentieth century in many countries, including the UK, US, Hungary, and USSR. However, the development of LGBTQ+ rights within socialism was never linear and even.
The conference seeks to address those discrepancies and the reasoning behind them. It aims to discuss the LGBTQ+ experience and its political, social, and cultural implications under state socialism from a global perspective. What was the place of queerness under socialism? Was socialist ideology generally more responsive to queer people’s agenda and empathic towards them? How did legislation relate to same-sex activity change over time in socialist countries? How did the Cold War and geopolitical tensions between socialist and capitalist counties influence and inform sexual politics toward queer people and their perception? Why did some socialist countries, such as the Czech Republic, Hungary, and the GDR decriminalize homosexuality as early as the 1960s and the Polish People’s Republic never criminalize it? What strategies of networking and concealment did sexual and gender non-conformists adopt in the socialist countries where homosexuality was still illegal, such as Soviet Republics, China, and Cuba? What was the attitude towards gender and sexual dissidents among the left-leaning movements in capitalist countries? Why decriminalization of homosexuality and homosexual emancipation that followed it was subsequently cut off in some post-socialist countries such as Russia?
The main goal of the symposium is to reflect on the broad spectrum of topics related to the conjunction of queer and socialist ideology from a global and comparative perspective. The symposium aims at the broader public, including students, scholars, and activists.

As North and Central America increasingly experience climate change and disasters (fires, hurricanes, drought, rising waters from the Great Lakes and Atlantic Ocean), the US has come to realize what our European colleagues have been experiencing as they have been at the forefront of the accelerating trend of global displacement related to climate change. The pre-covid years of 2015-2016 saw the highest peak of immigration into Europe. Last year President Biden signed an executive order 14013 “Rebuilding and Enhancing programs to resettle refugees and planning for the impact of climate change on migration”. With the release of the report, it was the first time the U.S. Government officially reported on the link between climate change and migration. While no nation offers asylum to climate migrants, the UN High Commission on Human Rights has published legal guidelines for offering protection to people displaced by the effects of global warming. Additionally, several of the 169 targets established by the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) lay out general goals that could be used to protect climate migrants. The panel will be an informal discuss of how Europe’s experience with climate change and migrants can inform the United States.
The organizer and moderator of the Panel is Mary Rauktis, School of Social Work, University of Pittsburgh
The Panel members are:
Sigrid James, University of Kassel, Germany
Juri Kilian, University of Kassel, German
Carla Malafaia, University of Porto, Portugal
Cosmin Nada, University of Porto, Portugal
Sheila Velez Martinez, School of Law, University of Pittsburgh

This annual national competition provides US high school, middle school, and college students the opportunity to demonstrate their Russian language knowledge while meeting with 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 resume.
Saturday, March 25, 2023 | In-Person
University of Pittsburgh | David Lawrence Hall | 3942 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Participation
All students participating in the Olympiada of Spoken Russian must have a sponsor, who will register the student in advance of the event and chaperone the student at the event.
Registration Deadline: Monday, February 20, 2023
To register your school, please complete the school registration form, and please use the student registration form to enter your students in the competition.
Questions?
Olga Klimova | vok1@pitt.edu

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