Events

For just $1.00 a cup, sip on tea prepared using a traditional Samovar, and take a crack at some Russian trivia.

El ciervo encantado presents

Departures: Performance, Displacement, and Bodies in Post-Soviet Cuba

Performance: Departures
Wednesday, October 23, 2019
12:00 – 1:15 pm
Wesley W. Posvar Hall 4130
“Departures” is a performance that deals with Cuban diaspora from 1959 to the present. It goes through each of the best-known migration crisis (i.e. 1980, 1994, etc.), and beyond, exploring this unceasing phenomenon that continues to occur today. Migration (forced or voluntary) has fragmented families, couples, friendships, communities, and because its all-encompassing nature,
has become a unifying element of Cuban identity. From the personal experience of actor Mariela Brito, her friends and family, interconnected with the personal stories of the audience, “Departures” seeks to be an act of reconciliation from a balanced approach to the events that have drastically changed the lives of so many, for good and bad. Taking the Cuban experience as a departure, this performance piece calls attention to a problem with global ramifications, at a moment of acute migration crisis and desperate flight of large groups from their geopolitical realities.
Director: Nelda Castillo
Actor: Mariela Brito

Conference: Performance Art in Post-Soviet Cuba
Thursday, October 24, 2019
4:00 - 5:15 pm
306 Cathedral of Learning
Cuban performance troupe El ciervo encantado will be discussing the implications of producing performance art in Cuba today.
Reflecting on their trajectory of over 20 years of experience, two members of this group, namely director Nelda Castillo and actor Mariela Brito, will address their public intervention as an act of solidarity with Havana's LGBT parade in May 2019. Their intervention was surveilled by the police and challenged by cultural officials. Delivered in Spanish, this talk will shed critical light on the pitfalls of communism and the challenges of artistic freedom in Post-Soviet Cuba.

Event Sponsors: Department of Hispanic Languages and Literatures, Center for Latin American Studies, Honors College, Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies, Office of Diversity & Inclusion

1989 doesn’t usually resonate in the chronology of significant anti-apartheid activism. Yet, that year saw the rise to power of FW de Klerk in South Africa and progress (albeit halting) towards the release of Nelson Mandela and other activists of the liberation struggle from prison, the unbanning of political organizations, and the negotiated dismantling of the apartheid state.

That trajectory, however, was a contested one with an ongoing state of emergency throughout the country, numerous acts of violence, and Winnie Mandela faced organizational exile from the United Democratic Front over allegations of violence by her supporters. This talk will explore these and other themes.

How can theater bring us closer to the issues at the center of Global Studies? Theater requires us to have an embodied encounter with the characters we are playing and the worlds they inhabit. It challenges the limits of our empathy and understanding while engaging us in a process of creative world-building that encourages us to imagine the world differently (in both utopian and dystopian ways). In this series, we will invite participants to pick up a script and try their hand at playing different characters in plays from around the world. You don’t have to have any experience in theater or Global Studies, and you don’t have to prepare anything. Just bring your sense of fun and imagination. After the play, there will be a brief discussion of the issues it raised as they relate to Global Studies.

Join us for Manjula Padmanabhan's Harvest.

Harvest is the story of an Indian family in the near future doing anything they can to stay alive. Om sells his body for parts. His wife Jaya suppresses her own desires to play the good Indian wife. His brother Jeetu prostitutes himself. But nothing can prepare them for the experience of having their home invaded by the holographic presence of Ginny, the western woman who buys Om’s body to upgrade her own. A natural extension of the black market buying and selling of organs, Harvest imagines the logical conclusion of a world of extreme income inequality, where people live in such desperate poverty that they will sell anything for their next meal.

Panelists
Dr. Matthew Johnson, Principal, AltaSilva LLC and Associate Fellow, Global Diplomatic Forum
Jonas Parello-Plesner, Executive Director, Alliance of Democracies, Copenhagen and non-resident Senior Fellow, German Marshall Fund
Michelle DeMoor, Senior Trade Advisor, Delegation of the European Union to the U.S.
Dr. Jean-Marc F. Blanchard, Executive Director, Mr. & Mrs. S.H. Wong Center for the Study ofMultinational Corporations

Followed by reception.
Please register for free at euchinaroundtable.eventbrite.com

For just $1.00 a cup, sip on tea prepared using a traditional Samovar, and take a crack at some Russian trivia.

The Slavic version of the vampire myth is especially rich and compelling. In this talk, Dr. J. D. Wright will explore the ways in which the Slavic world understood the vampire and also how the image or metaphor of vampirism has been put to use for a variety of different purposes, both political and personal.

Are you graduating soon? Wondering what your next adventure could be? Learn about the Japan Exchange & Teaching (JET) Program. It is a great opportunity for college graduates to work in Japan as an Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) or Coordinators for International Relations (CIR).

Eighteenth-century France was renowned for having a high society and a philosophical movement that celebrated the pursuit of pleasure. Underneath this surface hedonism, however, one finds ambivalence about the capacity of human beings to regulate their desires without the traditional constraints of scarcity and sin. Unlike the stable and rational category of happiness, pleasure threatened to derail liberal models of self and society. I argue that this anxiety about pleasure coalesced in the category of debauchery. I will explore the meaning and scope of debauchery through a combination of police archives, medical tracts, fairytales, and political pamphlets. This attention to debauchery explains the impact of pornography in discrediting the monarchy and the importance of moral discipline in the French Revolution.

Yi Yi （一 一） is a 2000 Taiwanese film written and directed by Edward Yang. The film's theme centers around the emotional struggles of an engineer named NJ and three generations of his middle-class Taiwanese family in Taipei.
The title in Chinese means "one by one" (meaning "one after another"). When written in vertical alignment, the two strokes resemble the character for "two": (二). Yi Yi premiered at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, where Yang won the Best Director Award. It is now generally regarded as one of the major films of the 21st century.
- Q and A with film scholar Chris Lupke.

The year 1989 witnessed momentous changes in global politics: the end of the Cold War, the acceleration of global neoliberal capitalism, and the start of a long decade of internationalism and interventionism -- G.H.W Bush's famous "New World Order."

In this conversation with Dr. William Brustein, Vice President for Global Strategies and International Affairs and Eberly Family Distinguished Professor of Sociology at West Virginia University and former Director of Pitt's University Center for International Studies, we explore how the events of 1989 and their aftermath contributed to the creation of Global Studies as a Field and as an academic enterprise.

In 1619 a ship carrying 20-some enslaved Africans arrived in British North America. In commemoration of the 400th anniversary of that history-shaping event, the Department of Africana Studies and the Global Studies Center will host Conversations on 1619. Too many Americans are ignorant or ill-informed about the history of slavery and enslavement, and there are too few opportunities to have frank conversations about it. Events, aimed at Pitt undergrads but open to all members of the Pitt community, provide a space for informed, moderated discussion of topics related to slavery, whiteness, racism, and the making of our country.

In conjunction with the Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures program's "Ten Evenings" series, Global Studies Center 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. A limited number of tickets to the author's lectures will be available to those who attend the discussions.

Micah Myers joined Kenyon in 2013. He previously held positions at North Carolina State University and Indiana University, Bloomington. Myers teaches Latin and Greek language courses, as well as courses in translation on ancient literature and culture. His research focuses on Latin poetry and on travel in the ancient world.

Andrea Mubi Brighenti is aggregate professor of Social Theory and Space & Culture at the Department of Sociology, University of Trento, Italy. Research topics focus on space, power and society. He has published The Ambiguous Multiplicities: Materials, episteme and politics of some cluttered social formations (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), Visibility in Social Theory and Social Research (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) and Territori migranti [Migrant Territories. Space and Control of Global Mobility] (ombre corte, 2009). Has edited Urban Interstices. The Aesthetics and Politics of Spatial In-betweens(Ashgate, 2013), Uma Cidade de Imagens (Mundos Sociais, 2012 – with Ricardo Campos and Luciano Spinelli), and The Wall and the City (professionaldreamers, 2009). Urban Walls. Political and Cultural Meanings of Vertical Surfaces (Routledge, 2018, co-edited with Mattias Kärrholm).

Improve your Russian, meet other Russian students, prepare for oral exams and learn more about Russian culture!

Information Session for graduates and undergraduates about Nationality Rooms Summer Study Abroad Opportunities.

Register here: http://www.nationalityrooms.pitt.edu/content/register-scholarship-inform...

Your international experience does not have to end with the completion of your study abroad program. Pittsburgh is home to a plethora of cultural groups, internationally minded non-profits and global businesses. Apply your international experience to a world of opportunities here in Pittsburgh! Learn about internship, volunteering and part-time job opportunities, where you can advance the skills learned abroad and make a difference locally.