View a comprehensive calendar of events.
Thursday, March 13
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently predicted that global average temperatures will rise 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels in the mid-2030s. Over the last decades, a global network of scholars, policy makers, activists, and others have organized to offer ways to mitigate and even reverse the effects of climate change. What offramps can these solutions and movements offer our collective humanity?
“Eurasian Environments” seeks to provide some reflections to mark the UN’s 2024 Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan. This series will examine social justice and sustainability efforts to address climate change by putting scholars of Eurasia in conversation with their peers specializing on Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe. The series will comprise six events that will illuminate the challenges and possible solutions to climate change in Eurasia in regional and global contexts.
This event is part of the Eurasian Environments: Climate Justice and Sustainability in Global Context series.
Saturday, March 15
This annual national competition provides US 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.
Event date: Saturday, March 15, 2025
Location: TBA
Registration Deadline: January 25, 2025
For more information and to register, please visit: https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/creees/events/olympiada
Join the Nationality Rooms and Intercultural Exchange Programs and the Hungarian Room Committee, along with the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, the European Studies Center, and the Hungarian Program of Less Commonly Taught Languages in the Department of Linguistics to commemorate the 1848 Hungarian Revolution.
Daniel Mikecz, PhD, Fulbright Visiting Professor, at the University of Pittsburgh will talk about the importance of the 1848 revolution in Hungary’s history and the influence of the revolutionary leader, Lajos Kossuth's trip in the United States and the Hungarian '48-ers who joined the Union forces in the Civil War in the United States. A reading of the the Nemzeti dal or "National Song", the patriotic poem written by Sándor Petőfi, will also be shared.
A reception will be held following the program portion in the Frick Fine Arts Building Cloister.
The event is free and open to the public.
Tuesday, March 18
Dr. Sajić served as the ambassador of Bosnia and Herzegovina to France, UNESCO, Algeria, Monaco, Andorra and Romania. She was also a foreign policy advisor in the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina. She will be at Pitt to discuss her diplomatic experiences with students and the wider community.
Light lunch will be provided.
Attention: Undergraduate students! Are you looking to gain experience that will help prepare you for a globally-connected job market? Stop by Drop-In Hours to learn more about getting the Global Distinction added to your academic transcript, receiving special recognition at graduation, and standing out to prospective employers!
Wednesday, March 19
Join us for a discussion on the growing challenges to democratic ideals in an age of populism, polarization, mis/mal/dis information, and rising authoritarianism. This event will explore the interplay between democratic values and anti-democratic forces, highlighting historical and contemporary movements that both support and erode the democratic project.
Roundtable I: Provocation on Mis/Mal/Dis Information
Roundtable II: Academic Panel
Roundtable III: Provocation on Populism
For more information, visit our website: https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/esc/events/ad-mini-symposium
Registration is required
Join your classmates for Slovak conversation practice in a fun, relaxed environment!
Friday, March 21
The University Center for International Studies is excited to hold its first annual Qissa (story in Arabic), a celebration of heritage, culture, and personal experiences through storytelling. We invite all Pitt students to share your internationally-focused story using various creative forms and listen to others in this unique performance setting.
Tuesday, March 25
Attention: Undergraduate students! Are you looking to gain experience that will help prepare you for a globally-connected job market? Stop by Drop-In Hours to learn more about getting the Global Distinction added to your academic transcript, receiving special recognition at graduation, and standing out to prospective employers!
Wednesday, March 26
Join your classmates for Slovak conversation practice in a fun, relaxed environment!
Whether you're a seasoned professional or a Freshman just starting out, having a concise and compelling elevator pitch is essential in today's fast-paced world. An elevator pitch is a brief overview of your background, experience, and goals that you can deliver in the time it might take to ride an elevator - typically 30 seconds or less.
In the interwar period, a Polish Consulate served Pittsburgh's sizeable population with Polish roots. The last consul before the Second World War was Heliodor Sztark, who came to Pittsburgh in 1938, together with his wife, Aniela and their younger daughter Nina. All three became active public figures within the Polish community, the city of Pittsburgh, and Pitt. After the war, Heliodor resigned from his post because he did not agree with the new Polish government.
The family settled in Texas, where they started a new life under very difficult conditions. Their older daughter remained in Poland, but stayed in close contact with the US branch of the family.
The talk will focus on the Sztark family's trajectory before, during, and after their stay in Pittsburgh. Based on material from the Pittsburgh Polish newspaper "Pittsburczanin," interviews with descendants, and documents from archives in the US, Poland, and Germany, Professor Jan Musekamp will demonstrate how an East Central European family navigated realities in independent and wartime Poland, and the Cold War United States.
Thursday, March 27
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently predicted that global average temperatures will rise 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels in the mid-2030s. Over the last decades, a global network of scholars, policy makers, activists, and others have organized to offer ways to mitigate and even reverse the effects of climate change. What offramps can these solutions and movements offer our collective humanity?
“Eurasian Environments” seeks to provide some reflections to mark the UN’s 2024 Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan. This series will examine social justice and sustainability efforts to address climate change by putting scholars of Eurasia in conversation with their peers specializing on Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe. The series will comprise six events that will illuminate the challenges and possible solutions to climate change in Eurasia in regional and global contexts.
This event is part of the Eurasian Environments: Climate Justice and Sustainability in Global Context series.
Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 has resulted in the closure of Russia to western researchers, and a redirection of Russophone scholarship toward Central Asia. How has this phenomenon affected the academic communities and institutions of Central Asia? This workshop will examine several examples of "public history" in the region, including Nazarbayev University's "E-atlas of Kazakhstan's Sacred Geography," Harvard University's Central Asian Archive Project, and the speaker's own oral history project on the Orthodox clergy's role in the promotion of Kazakh language.
Friday, March 28
The European and Eurasian 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.
SYMPOSIUM: Friday, March 28, 2025
APPLICATION DEADLINE: Friday, January 10, 2025
https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/creees/urs
QUESTIONS? Contact Zita Tóth-Shawgo
SPONSORS
Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies
Consortium for Educational Resources on Islamic Studies
European Studies Center
University Center for International Studies
Graduate Organization for the Study of Europe and Central Asia
Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences
Orthodox Christianity first came to Central Asia along with the Russian conquest in the 19th century. Along with Slavic settlers came Orthodox sacred objects, such as miraculous icons and the relics of saints. Churches, monasteries, and parish communities were build around these objects. During the colonisation process, control over Orthodox sacred objects was contested by the imperial regime, settler communities, and the native population. These objects ultimately became targets of violent conflict during the anti-colonial uprising of 1916, and the revolutionary violence and terror of the following decade. The physical survival of the Orthodoxy in Central Asia was possible due to the collaborative efforts of both settlers and natives, despite the efforts of the colonial regime to utilise the Church for the consolidation of Russian rule. The Orthodox objects and spaces that dot the landscape today comprise part of Central Asia's shared cultural heritage.
Please note a change of time:
Keynote Speaker for the Undergraduate Research Symposium:
The Discussion will explore one of the means by which primarily young people in West Germany attempted to “revolutionize” everyday life and beyond, through new, explicitly political forms of cohabitation designated Wohngemeinschaften (WGs). WGs served as critical hubs of more conventional popular politics of the era, but also housed intense experiments in remaking the self and relations with others, transcending the nuclear family and the centrality of the couples relationship, and working through ideas and convictions across populations often conceived as incompatible. Part of broader efforts to remake German society from the bottom up, these experiments mark one site of successful youth efforts to transform the world around them.
About the Speaker:
Belinda Davis is a professor of history at Rutgers University and director of the Rutgers Center for European Studies. She is author or co-editor of five books, including the coedited Social Movements After ’68: Selves and Solidarities in West Germany and Beyond (2022); The Internal Life of Politics: Extraparliamentary Opposition in West Germany, 1962-1983 (forthcoming with Cambridge). She is currently completing work on Voices of the Organized Poor: Learning from the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign’s Everyday Struggles for Survival and Alternative Futures; and working on an environmental history of modern Europe for Cambridge University Press. She is a member of the Rutgers team participating in the Jean Monnet-funded ValEUs grant, of which the University of Pittsburgh is also a consortium member.
The Women's Bandura Ensemble of North America is coming to Pittsburgh! Join us in Bellefield Hall on March 28, 7:00 - 9:00 p.m. for beautiful traditional Ukrainian music. Free and open to the public
Tuesday, April 1
Attention: Undergraduate students! Are you looking to gain experience that will help prepare you for a globally-connected job market? Stop by Drop-In Hours to learn more about getting the Global Distinction added to your academic transcript, receiving special recognition at graduation, and standing out to prospective employers!
Wednesday, April 2
Join your classmates for Slovak conversation practice in a fun, relaxed environment!
Sunday, April 6
Dr. John Palka is a retired professor of biology at the University of Washington with a specialty in neuroscience. He is the winner of numerous prestigious academic awards, including election as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, two Fulbright Fellowships for teaching in India, and a Guggenheim Fellowship for research in Cambridge, England. He also co-founded and co-directed the University of Washington's highly lauded Program on the Environment.
A two-time refugee from his Slovak homeland- in 1939 from the Nazis and in 1949 from the Communists- Dr. Palka has retained his love for Slovakia and his fluency in the Slovak language. Over the years he has visited his family in Slovakia often. These experiences inspired his research into the role that many generations of his family played in the national life of Slovakia, laying the foundation for his book My Slovakia, My Family: One Family's Role in the Birth of a Nation.
Tuesday, April 8
Attention: Undergraduate students! Are you looking to gain experience that will help prepare you for a globally-connected job market? Stop by Drop-In Hours to learn more about getting the Global Distinction added to your academic transcript, receiving special recognition at graduation, and standing out to prospective employers!
Wednesday, April 9
Join your classmates for Slovak conversation practice in a fun, relaxed environment!
The presentation discusses the role of local public libraries in shaping memory about the Great Patriotic War in Russia today. With a particular focus on the Northwest of Russia, it will demonstrate how local libraries practice an emotional approach to commemoration, building close connections with their audiences through the feelings and personal histories they convey by means of material objects. Rendering local public libraries as powerful memory influencers in the region, the presentation will show their contribution to promoting local patriotism and remembering the militarized past.
Elena Kochetkova is currently an Associate Professor of Modern European Economic History at the Department of Archeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion at the University of Bergen. She is the author of the monograph "The Green Power of Socialism: Wood, Forest, and the Making of Soviet Industrially Embedded Ecology" (MIT Press, 2024). She is currently working on a monograph on food modernity under state socialism. She is also working within the project "'Memory Politics of the North, 1993-2023", funded by the Norwegian Research Council.
Thursday, April 10
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently predicted that global average temperatures will rise 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels in the mid-2030s. Over the last decades, a global network of scholars, policy makers, activists, and others have organized to offer ways to mitigate and even reverse the effects of climate change. What offramps can these solutions and movements offer our collective humanity?
“Eurasian Environments” seeks to provide some reflections to mark the UN’s 2024 Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan. This series will examine social justice and sustainability efforts to address climate change by putting scholars of Eurasia in conversation with their peers specializing on Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe. The series will comprise six events that will illuminate the challenges and possible solutions to climate change in Eurasia in regional and global contexts.
This event is part of the Eurasian Environments: Climate Justice and Sustainability in Global Context series.
Tuesday, April 15
Attention: Undergraduate students! Are you looking to gain experience that will help prepare you for a globally-connected job market? Stop by Drop-In Hours to learn more about getting the Global Distinction added to your academic transcript, receiving special recognition at graduation, and standing out to prospective employers!
Wednesday, April 16
Join your classmates for Slovak conversation practice in a fun, relaxed environment!
Tuesday, April 22
Attention: Undergraduate students! Are you looking to gain experience that will help prepare you for a globally-connected job market? Stop by Drop-In Hours to learn more about getting the Global Distinction added to your academic transcript, receiving special recognition at graduation, and standing out to prospective employers!
Thursday, May 1
The University Center for International Studies cordially invites students graduating in Spring and Summer 2024 to celebrate their academic achievements and receive their credentials at the University Center for International Studies’ Graduation Ceremony in the Charity Randall Theater followed by a reception in the Schenley Plaza Tent.
Graduating students should look for their personal email invitations from the University Center for International Studies to RSVP and contact their UCIS academic advisor with any questions about the event. For additional details, please contact Laura Daversa at Laura.Daversa@pitt.edu
Reception to follow the ceremony at 2:30pm in the Schenley Plaza Tent.