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This week in the humanities Center |
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Aaron Cowan Lecture: "History Happened Here: Heritage Tourism and Modernist Renewal in Postwar Pittsburgh"
Aaron Cowan (Slippery Rock University)
TOMORROW, Wednesday, April 5 2017
4:00 PM
Humanities Center, Cathedral of Learning
A native of southwest Virginia, Aaron Cowan
has been teaching at Slippery Rock University since 2008. His research and teaching interests include urban, environmental and public history. He is author of A Nice Place to Visit: Tourism and Urban Revitalization in the Postwar Rustbelt, published in 2016 by Temple University Press. The book examines the rise of tourism as a revitalization strategy in struggling "Rustbelt" cities, and the effects that development on cities' political, economic, and social dynamics. Dr. Cowan is also founder and co-coordinator of Slippery Rock University's Stone House Center for Public Humanities, an initiative that seeks to build partnerships between university and community that expand appreciation of the humanities.
This lecture is free and open to the public. Reception to follow.
Co-sponsored by the Urban Studies Program.
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Faculty Colloquium: "Masculinity and Affect"
Please view the wesbite for full details including readings, the presenters, and the full schedule: https://www.affectivemasculinity.com
Thursday, April 5 - Friday, April 6, 2017
Starting at 11:00 AM both days. Full schedule here.
Humanities Center, 602 Cathedral of Learning
Emotion and masculinity have been studied together for decades now. But what would it mean, in 2017, to place affect studies and masculinity studies into dialogue? What do concepts such as energy, force, or pre-conscious bodily sensation do to masculinity and to masculinity studies? Where does affect leave emotion?
We will spend two days generating thought on these and other questions. Our colloquium will include presentations and reading groups and will involve scholars from a broad range of disciplines.
The colloquium is free and open to the public, but registration is required. Email graduate coordinator Steven Moon at SRM117@pitt.edu. For more information, contact Todd Reeser at reeser@pitt.edu.
Coorganized by Todd Reeser (GSWS Program) and Brent Malin (Dept. of Communication and Humanities Center Associate Director). The Graduate organizers are Nicholas Marsellas (Dept. of English) and Steven Moon (Dept. of Music).
Sponsored by the Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies Program. Cosponsored by the Humanities Center, the Year of Diversity, the European Studies Center, the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, and the Department of Communication.
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Upcoming Humanities Center Events |
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The Pitt Inside-Out Prison Education Initiative
An Informal Meeting for Faculty and Graduate Students
Monday, April 10, 2017
4:00 - 5:30 PM
501G Cathedral of Learning
Several faculty members will pilot an Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program at the State Correctional Institute at Fayette (SCI Fayette) in 2017-2018, and we are hoping to get approval to continue and expand the program. We would like to identify other faculty members in the Dietrich School who might be interested in being part of the program and gauge the extent of faculty support for this initiative. We would also like to identify graduate students in the Dietrich School who support this initiative and who might like to participate in the program as volunteer tutors in the coming year or who might be involved as tutors or train to be instructors if the program continues.
The Inside-Out program (http://www.insideoutcenter.org) is an educational program that brings together Pitt undergraduates (the outside students) and incarcerated people (the inside students) in classes taught at a correctional facility. The program began at Temple University more than 20 years ago, and since then more than 100 academic institutions and correctional institutions have partnered to offer Inside-Out courses. SCI Fayette is about an hour’s drive from Pittsburgh and is one of the nearest correctional facilities aside from SCI Pittsburgh, which will be closing its doors this year. The administration at SCI Fayette welcomes the program, and we look forward to this partnership.
For more information, contact anyone from the Inside-Out group at Pitt:
Chris Bonneau (Political Science) - cwbonneau@gmail.com
Nancy Glazener (English) - glazener@pitt.edu
Cory Holding (English) – coryholding@gmail.com
Shalini Puri (English) – spuri@pitt.edu
Hannah Johnson (English) - hrjohn@gmail.com
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Between Haiti and Europe: A Literature of Migration
Haitian poet and novelist, Louis-Philippe Dalembert
A Humanities Center Colloquium with an introduction by John Walsh (FRIT) and response by Felix Germain (Africana Studies).
Tuesday, April 11, 2017
12:30 - 2:00 PM
Humanities Center, 602 Cathedral of Learning
Louis-Philippe Dalembert’s latest novels, Ballade d’un amour inachevé (2013) and Avant que les ombres s’effacent (2017), are tales of migration. The former takes the reader between Haiti to Italy, while the latter goes from Poland to Haiti. Both novels reimagine journeys of migrants and refugees amidst earthquakes and war, respectively. The colloquium will feature Dalembert’s readings of selected passages, followed by a discussion of the ways the literature mediates the impact of political and natural disasters.
About the speaker: Author of prize-winning novels, short stories, and collections of poetry, Louis-Philippe Dalembert is a self-described vagabond. He has held numerous writer-in-residence fellowships all over the world, including Rome, Paris, Berlin, Tunis, Kinshasa, and Jerusalem. Holder of a doctorate in Comparative Literature from the Sorbonne, Dalembert has also taught at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Bern Universität in Switzerland.
Sponsored by: Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, Humanities Center and Year of Diversity; University Honors College; European Studies Center; Center for Latin American Studies; Departments of French & Italian and Africana Studies.
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Spring Faculty Seminar with Humanities Center Visiting Fellow: John Durham Peters
John Durham Peters (Yale University)
"Atmospheres and Inscriptions"
May 1 - 5, 2017
11:00 AM - 1:00 PM each day
Humanities Center, 602 Cathedral of Learning
This year’s visiting fellow and seminar leader, John Durham Peters, Professor of Film and Media Studies at Yale University, is an intellectual historian and philosopher of media and communication. Professor Peters has published books and essays on such varied topics as the history of communication research, the philosophy of technology, pragmatism, the public sphere, and media and religion. His first book, Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication
was published by the University of Chicago Press in 1999. The winner of the James A. Winans-Herbert A. Wichelns Memorial Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Rhetoric and Public Address from the National Communication Association, Speaking into the Air has been translated into eight different languages and earned Professor Peters wide recognition as an intellectual and cultural historian. His second book, Courting the Abyss: Free Speech and the Liberal Tradition, was published by University of Chicago Press in 2005. His most recent book, The Marvelous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media, which explores a range of media infrastructures—from television transmitters to the sun—was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2015.
If you are interested in participating in this seminar, please RSVP to the Humanities Center to confirm. Although all are welcome, these seminars have filled in the past, so an early confirmation is recommended to help guarantee your space in the seminar. We will hold a series of preparatory discussions through the spring term to begin conversation on its topics. Please address questions about the seminar
to Brent Malin, the center’s Associate Director.
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John Durham Peters Lecture: “Projection and Protection: On the Deep Optical and Ballistical Intersections of Screens”
John Durham Peters (Yale University)
Tuesday, May 2, 2017
5:00 - 7:00 PM
501 Cathedral of Learning
The ubiquity of screens today invites us to recast the ways we think about the history of media. In particular, the dual optical and environmental aspects of the screen concept since the early nineteenth century invite reflection on a longer genealogy of media practices that both project and protect, that both show and shield. In this paper, I outline a lineage of the screen concept that emphasizes the intertwined history of optics and ballistics. I do this first via a sketch of historical convergences between cultural practices of targeting and visualizing in western history and second via a more focused look at postwar practices that combine detonation and image-making in photography, film, and television, especially around the atomic bomb.
This public lecture by John Durham Peters is part of the Humanities Center Spring Faculty Seminar "Atmospheres and Inscriptions".
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more EVENTS |
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UNIVERSITY & COMMUNITY EVENTS
Do you have an event that you'd like featured?
Email the Humanities Center by Friday at 12pm for your chance for the event to appear in next week's edition!
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LATIN AMERICAN IN MOTION: PITT LATIN AMERICAN FILMS
IXCANUL (Guatemala, 2015)
TODAY: Tuesday, April 4, 2017
7:00 PM
G23 Public Health Building (130 De Soto St, corner with 5th Ave)
Watch the trailer here.
Award winner film in the Berlin International Film Festival (2015), Biarritz International Festival of Latin American Cinema (2015), Guadalajara International Film Festival (2015), Lima Latin American Film Festival (2015), Oslo International Film Festival (2015), Philadelphia Film Festival (2015).
Join us after the film for a Q&A session with Elizabeth Monasterios, Professor of Latin American Literature.
Free and open to the public. Pizza included.
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Studio Arts Student Exhibition - Opening Reception
Thursday, April 6, 2017
4:00 - 6:00 pm
University Art Gallery, Frick Fine Arts Building
The creative work of graduating seniors is featured in the Studio Arts Student Exhibition along with exceptional works, by majors and non-majors, from the range of Studio Arts courses.
Learn more here.
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Hyperbolized Modes of Latinidad: A Video Screening and Artist Lecture by Xandra Ibarra/La Chica Boom
Friday, April 7, 2017
6:00 - 8:00 PM
Public Health Auditorium, Rm G23
FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.
Xandra Ibarra is an Oakland-based performance artist from the El Paso/Juarez border who often performs and works under the alias of La Chica Boom. Ibarra uses hyperbolized modes of racialization and sexualization to test the boundaries between her own body and coloniality, compulsory whiteness, and Mexicanidad. Her practice integrates performance, sex acts, and burlesque with video, photography, and objects. Throughout her multiple works, she teeters between abjection and joy and problematizes the borders between proper and improper racial, gender, and queer subject.
Ibarra’s work has been featured at El Museo de Arte Contemporañeo (Bogotá, Colombia), Broad Museum (LA, USA), Popa Gallery (Buenos Aires, Argentina), Joe’s Pub (NYC), Maccarone Gallery (NYC), and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (SF) to name a few. Recent residencies include Fort Mason Center for Arts and Culture, National Performance Network, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and CounterPulse. She has been awarded the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Away Award, ReGen Artist Fund, Theater Bay Area Grant, NALAC Fund for the Arts and the Franklin Furnace Performance and Variable Media Award.
As a community organizer, Ibarra’s work is located within immigrant, anti-rape and prison abolitionist movements. Since 2003, she has actively participated in organizing with INCITE!, a national feminist of color organization dedicated to creating interventions at the intersection of state and interpersonal violence.
For more information, contact Armando García (arg93@pitt.edu).
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Vanessa German: this love that is as big as the future
A performance piece by the celebrated local artist. Followed by the stage production "Baltimore."
Friday, April 7, 2017
7:00 PM
Heymann Theatre, 4301 Forbes Avenue
This performance is free and open to the public. For more information, click here.
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2017 CMU International Film Festival presents PITTSBURGH FILM PREMIERE!
Between Fences (Bein gderot) (Israel / France, 2016, 85 min)
Watch a flim clip
Saturday, April 8, 2017
7:00 PM
Regent Square Theatre
Learn more about this event here!
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2017 CMU International Film Festival presents PITTSBURGH FILM PREMIERE!
El Futuro Perfecto (Argentina, 2016, 65 min)
Sunday, April 9, 2017
4:00 PM
McConomy Auditorium, CMU
Learn more about this event here!
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Talking About Asia: From Missionary Cook to Counterrevolutionary: The Saga of a Chinese Christian Family
Jennifer Lin
Journalist and author of Shanghai Faithful, Betrayal and Forgiveness in a Chinese Christian Family
Tuesday, April 11, 2017
12:00 PM
4130 Posvar Hall
Journalist Jennifer Lin examines the tumultuous past and present of Christianity in China through five generations of her family. A former Beijing correspondent for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Lin chronicles 150 years of family history in the recently-published “Shanghai Faithful: Betrayal and Forgiveness in a Chinese Christian Family” (Rowman & Littlefield). The book includes a compelling cast: a doctor who treated opium addicts; a Penn-educated Chinese pastor; and the influential independent religious leader Watchman Nee, imprisoned after 1949 as a “counterrevolutionary.” Author Orville Schell called Lin’s book “a beautifully written elegy to that generation of foreign educated, humanist and often Christian Chinese who had begun to form a cosmopolitan class in China that was comfortable on both sides of the East/West divide and might have successfully
led China from its cultural traditionalism into modernity.”
This event is sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Asian Studies Center. Questions? Email asia@pitt.edu
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The Center for Latin American Studies and the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literatures Present Latin America in Motion: Pitt Latin American Films
The Club
Chile- 2015
Watch the trailer
Tuesday, April 11, 2017
7:00 PM
Parran Hall.Public Health Building -G23 (Corner of Fifth Ave and De Soto St)
Director: Pablo Larrain (Jackie,No)
Berlin International Film Festival 2015- Grand Jury Prize
Chicago International Film Festival 2015- Best Director
Havana Film Festival 2015- Best Film
Lima International Film Festival 2015-Best Director
Montreal Festival of New Cinema 2015-Best Director
Q&A and discussion following with Professor Junyoung Verónica Kim (Hispanic Languages and Literatures, and Film Studies).
Film subtitled, free, and enjoy free pizza!
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