Dear Global Studies students, faculty, staff, friends: 

I hope you will enjoy reading our Fall 2016 newsletter, with interesting opportunities for your work, research, and intellectual sustenance. I call attention here to news about two clusters of events that are evidence--in profoundly different ways--of the vision and ambition we aim to foster at the Center. As contrastive as they are, the two clusters share a commitment to the Center's 2015-2018 focus on Human Rights, Human Security, and Global Health. They highlight the work of colleagues from such diverse communities as Philosophy and Social Work; they offer an opportunity for collaboration with partners as (normally) distinct from each other as the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh and United Steelworkers. The first cluster of events is the October culmination of the 2015-16 series on global ethics, Coevality; the second is the November beginning of a 2016-17 series on livable cities, the Housing Summit.  These two clusters share an interest in what the Pitt Global Plan refers to as Transnational Pittsburgh, demonstrating the ways in which our local communities participate in transnational and transregional issues and struggles in evidence elsewhere throughout the globe. 

Peter Singer (Th.-Fr., Oct 13-14).  As part of the yearlong 2015-16 series Coevality: Global Ethics in a Time of Total Change, organized by Inaugural Global Studies Faculty Fellow Prof. Terry Smith (Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Art Theory), this two-day visit by Prof. Peter Singer will be the culminating occasion of the series. Described as the world's most influential living philosopher, Peter Singer (Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics, Princeton; Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, University of Melbourne) is ranked by the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute (2014) at the top of its list of Global Thought Leaders; Time has named him among the world's 100 most influential people. Our principal sponsor for the two-day event is the University Center for International Studies (our institutional home); we are grateful to the Humanities Center, the Year of the Humanities, the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences Department of the History of Art and Architecture, as well as to the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh for their additional support.  

AY17 Global Studies Faculty Fellow.  In the course of this 2016-17 academic year, Prof. Jackie Smith (Sociology), the new GSC Faculty Fellow, will be leading a series of events that address the issue of the global housing crisis. The first of these events is the Housing Summit (Th.-Sat., Nov 10-12). Pittsburgh's economic re-development has earned it the reputation as one of the country's "most livable cities"; some might ask "livable for whom?" In addressing this issue, Jackie's efforts give us the opportunity to work with several new external partners, including Homes for All Coalition-Pittsburgh, the Human Rights City Alliance, United Steelworkers, and the University Human Rights Network.

As of December 31st 2016, when I hand the Center leadership to my colleague and friend, Prof. Michael Goodhart (Political Science), I will take up the directorship of the Center for Russian and East European Studies (also a federally-funded Title VI Center of Excellence within UCIS). Many of you will remember Michael's outstanding job as Interim Director of GSC a year ago, and I have confidence that he will keep the best of the past and be undaunted in initiating new projects that will retain GSC among the very few federally-funded Global Studies Centers in the US.

As I step down as the inaugural Director of the Center, I am proud that I had the chance to participate in the staff effort to bring the Center through its second competitive funding cycle with top rankings, securing substantially increased support from the US Department of Education and supplementary funding by Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships (FLAS). As one of only seven US global centers to have survived that federal competition, we saw a 75% increase in our FLAS fellowships. Today Global Studies is in the implementation stage of its successful bid and now is a good time (well before the 2018 competition) to consider new directions we might take for the upcoming competition.  In the meantime, happy reading!

Nancy Condee, Director, Global Studies Center 

Professor, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures; Film Studies Program

Thursday, October 13, 7:00 pm at Carnegie Library Lecture Hall and

Friday, October 14, 6:00 pm at Frick Fine Arts Auditorium, with a reception to follow.  Both evenings are free and open to the public.

The Global Studies Center is co-sponsoring the two-night event,Coevality: Global Ethics in a Time of Total Change , where the world-renowned moral and philosophical thought leader, Peter Singer, will present his lecture, Ethics for One World , on Thursday evening. Peter Singer, the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, and a Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne, who has also been ranked by Time as one of the world's 100 most influential people, will discuss the perils and the potentials inherent in globalization. Professor Singer will argue that the most important issues we face today are global rather than national.  From climate change, economic globalization and extreme poverty to the responsibility to protect people from genocide and crimes against humanity, he will make the case for the need to challenge both the prudence and the ethics of those who put forward narrow nationalistic perspectives. 

 

Humanizing the Global, Globalizing the Human

The Global Studies Center's support of the Faculty Development Seminar, "Humanizing the Global, Globalizing the Human," which began last year, in partnership with Pitt's Year of the Humanities initiative, will continue, with four more events scheduled through 2016-17. The popular and provocative lecture series will examine the global and humanistic themes of Empire and Imperialism  beginning on Thursday, November 17, with Imperial Amnesia: Reparations, Global Justice, and Why History Matters presented by  Jeanne Morefield, Professor of Politics at Whitman College. Professor Morefield will discuss topics such as the relationship between the contemporary and historical rhetoric(s) of imperialism, along with the conflict(s) between democracy and sovereignty.

The Global Studies Center is pleased to welcome two new additions to the GSC staff-Lisa Bromberg, as the Assistant Director of Outreach and Jessica Pickett, as the Director of Research and Global Programs.  

 

Dr. Jessica Pickett will spearhead strategic initiatives designed to advance the GSC's intellectual agenda under the University's Global Plan. Among other priorities, Dr. Pickett will develop the Governor's School for Global and International Studies, oversee the Global Academic Partnership, Faculty Fellows, and Kabak endowment programs, and will also teach courses in the Global Health concentration. She earned her Ph.D. in managerial science and applied economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where she explored the impact of consumer information on the market for primary care in rural India. Dr. Pickett has a decade of experience bridging the academic, business and policy communities, including previous roles with the Center for Global Development and

the Indian School of Business.  

One of the recipients of the Global Studies Center's FLAS (Foreign Language and Area Studies) Fellowships is Miranda (Mina) Hogsett, a third-year student in the University' s Social and Comparative Analysis in Education PhD program, who will also obtain a global studies certificate with a concentration in conflict and conflict resolution. Mina's scholarship includes the research of migration, gender, and humanitarian issues in the Levant region, along with her background in physics and math. With the FLAS fellowship, a prestigious award that enables the recipient to devote full time to graduate study, Mina has had the opportunity to take Arabic courses as a complement to her studies. The FLAS award has also enabled Mina to spend less time teaching courses at Chatham, which has, in turn, provided her with more time to focus on finishing her  graduate work.

 

In addition to her doctoral studies, Mina traveled to Germany this summer (funded by the Fred C. Bruhns Nationality Room Award), where she interviewed teenage, Syrian refugees, who were mostly male, and had arrived in Germany unaccompanied by parents or other family. Mina will present what she learned from her interview participants and experiences in Germany at a GSC-sponsored workshop for educators, hosted by GSC's Assistant Director of Outreach Lisa Bromberg. The workshop will help educate local teachers about the Syrian war and the current refugee crisis to better their own classroom instruction on these topics. Mina is also working with her advisor, Dr. Maureen Porter, to analyze the interviews and submit an article for publication by 2017 that explains how the teenagers she interviewed navigate various threats to their asylum status, safety, and dignity. 

 

Without the FLAS fellowship and its financial support, Mina believes she would have dropped out of her program and discontinued her doctoral studies.The FLAS freed Mina to study and better analyze the relationship between education and social justice, with a global perspective, and through a critical and interdisciplinary lens. For Mina, "the GSC has brought me so many learning opportunities during my two years at Pitt...I have attended informative, critical, unique, and inspiring talks given by speakers they've brought in from around the world; I was able to take an amazing class taught by a visiting professor they brought in, Dr. Luke Peterson; I was able to attend the annual meeting for the American Anthropological Association last year in Denver to present about the colonial infrastructures that Bedouin students mobilize under while living as citizens in Israel and the counter-narratives their lives and studies represent; I've been connected with incredible people from numerous backgrounds who dedicate their lives also to interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, global concerns. I also wouldn't have been able to go to Germany to interview Syrian refugees because Elaine Linn at the GSC connected me with the opportunity for the funding I received to conduct that research. The GSC has profoundly impacted my life. All the GSC offers continues to align with and propel my career toward experiences that will enable the projects and professional endeavors I'm involved with in the future to be more profound, informed, and coherent."

 

International Career Toolkit Series

Fridays, October 21, 2:30-5:00 pm & November 18, 2:30-4:00 pm

4217 Wesley W Posvar Hall

This GSC-sponsored series introduces students to the many careers available in the international field as they have the opportunity to meet and interact with a variety of professionals. Many of the guest speakers include Pitt alumni and those that have graduated with an international studies certificate. By attending one or all of the panels, students will gain insight on career choices, what specific careers entail, how to articulate and prepare for short and long term career goals, as well as how to utilize the resources at Pitt to make their goals a reality. October's event will focus on careers in human rights/social justice and, at November's event, students can discuss their opportunities abroad after graduation with alums from the Peace Corps, English Program in Korea (EPIK), Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme, Americorps, Teach for America, and the Fulbright Scholarship Program.  

 

 

Global Trivia!

1. Current Global Issues
2. World Geography 
3. World Cultures
4. World Sports
5. Global Pittsburgh
6. Global Competence of Hillary and Donald

Friday, October 28

11:00 am-3:30 pm

233 David E Lawrence Hall

As a part of Pitt's International Week, the Global Studies and European Studies Centers have partnered to offer students the chance to participate in a simulation of an important period in the history of international climate policy negotiations-the end of the Cold War and the creation of the European Union, spanning the years between 1979 and 1989. During this half-day event, students will immerse themselves in a role (a representative from Poland, a British diplomat, a climate scientist) and participate in active negotiations, answering questions such as these: How did climate science impact policy negotiations? To what extent did national interests trump environmental concerns? And how did large industrial countries respond to complaints from smaller, down-wind countries? Presenters will include Allyson Delnore, Interim Director of European Studies Center, Veronica Dristas, Assistant Director of Global Studies Center, and Michaël Aklin, Assistant Professor of Political Science. For more information, please send inquires to [email protected] .

 

 

Global Issues Through Literature: Multicultural Societies

The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears , Dinaw Mengestu

Wednesday, November 2

5:00-8:00 pm

4130 Wesley W Posvar Hall

 

For a full list of upcoming GSC events during the Fall and Spring terms, please click here.