Events

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.

Jain faith and practice has flourished for more than 2800 years in the midst of a host of different faiths. Haribhadra Virahanka (6th century C.E.) provided a template for what in modern times is called interfaith understanding: acknowledge differences and find commonalities. In his text known as the Yogabindu, he identified karma, yoga, worship (puja), and mantra as practices common to all India's faiths. He also noted and explained religious differences, particularly in regard to notions of soul and self. In this presentation, Dr. Christopher Chapple, Doshi Professor of Indic and Comparative Theology and founding Director of the Master of Arts in Yoga Studies at Loyola Marymount University, will explore how his method might inform the contemporary academic discipline of Religious Studies.
Registration is not required for in-person attendance at this lecture. To attend this lecture remotely via Zoom, please register here.

This forum will bring the Pittsburgh community together to learn about the history of the early Pittsburgh Chinatown and to highlight Chinese immigrants and their contributions to the greater Pittsburgh region and Southwestern Pennsylvania. Registration required at: https://pitt.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6PQOrox1fIJnwfY

"Those 4 Years" is an amazing journey into the lives of those Chinese who came to India around the middle of the 19th century… speaking a language unknown to their neighbours when they first arrived. The film journeys across three countries and reams of colonial office records to retrace the places those people came from, the means and mode of their arrival, and how many of them ended up making India their home. It is a history of people, plants and places - as it catalogues their contributions to plantations, locates places and sites associated with their earliest arrival and stay and, more remarkably, manages to locate some of the descendants of those Chinese who arrived in India over 150 years ago. After the film screening, there will be a Q&A with the film's creator, Dr. Joe Thomas Karackattu.

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. Lu Chen, Guangzhou University, will discuss traditional fandoms.

Join the Spanish Club for Spring 2023's weekly conversation hours, on Wednesdays from 7-8 pm!

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.

Global climate change is looming as a long-lasting, all-dimensional issue of the century with far reaching impacts. Despite the increasing interests and rhetoric, higher education is poorly prepared to keep pace with the rapidly changing climate. Global studies can and should play a leading role to prepare students whose lives will be increasingly impacted by the climate crisis. As an Earth scientist, international education administrator, and a current Harvard Radcliffe Fellow, Dr. Hong Yang explores the linkage between climate change and global education by drawing his expertise, experience, and recent interviews with climate change education experts. He examines key questions such as: How do current US-China relations impact climate change collaborations? What kind of intellectual competence should a college graduate acquire about climate change? What can international educators do to move climate change to the center of global studies?
Dr. Hong Yang is the Charles J. Smiley Chair Professor of Biological and Biomedical Sciences and the Inaugural Vice President in charge of campus internationalization at Bryant University. He is also a current Radcliffe Institute Fellow at Harvard University.

Join Lingovation, a service club with 82 members that speak 15 languages combined, for their final meeting of the semester and enjoy cultural food together!