Past Events
Two-day conference titled “History and its Discontents: Commemoration in Italy and the Francophone World.” The conference will welcome an exciting slate of visitors to campus to reflect on the dates, places, discourses, and mechanisms of commemoration in the French, Francophone, and Italian cultures.
This play reading and community dialogue will focus on the challenges of “gentrification” and examine the issues of “Old” v. “New” Pittsburgh through a humanities lens. Using theatre arts as a tool for community dialogue on the changing nature of Pittsburgh and its neighborhoods will provide a timely opportunity to engage campus community, the theatre community, and, particularly, the larger community in exploring the dynamic of Pittsburgh in transition.
Mass incarceration in the United States represents an unprecedented political and humanitarian crisis. Existing research shows that college-in-prison programs reduce in-facility violence and recidivism rates, providing a unique space for students to build meaningful lives during and after the time of their incarceration. We are committed to staging a conference that will provide a spark for education justice efforts in colleges and universities throughout the Allegheny region and the United States.
Wednesday, November 11, 2015 - 5:00pm Lawrence Hall 120
Screening and discussions of The Closed Sea (Stefano Liberti & Andrea Segre, 2012). This award winning documentary follows African migrants feeling the violence of
the 2011 Libyan war who, having sought entry into Italy, were turned away and deported to refugee camps at the Tunisian border. Andrea Segre will participate via Skype in a post-screening Q&A session.
The second in a series of plays dedicated to collaborations with artists of diverse heritages, the melding of artistic and critical practice, and community-academic partnerships. Good Kids was inspired by the Steubenville rape case, and addresses issues such as social media and sexual assault.
Thursday, November 12, 2015 - 5:00pm Gold Room, University Club, 123 University Place
An Assistant Professor of English, Spanish and Portuguese at New York University, Urayoán Noel has already made his mark as a poet and in the field of Latina/o Studies. He is the author of the critical study In Visible Movement: Nuyorican Poetry from the Sixties to Slam (University of Iowa Press, 2014), winner of the Latina/o Studies Book Prize from the Latin American Studies Association.
Friday, November 13, 2015 - 9:00am School of Information Sciences Building 3rd Floor Collaboration Space
This is the first of a pair of problem-based, research-focused workshops. Taken together, the workshops will be called “Intelligent Conversations about Digital Computing and the Humanities.” This session will confront the challenge of how digital technologies can aid in the study of visual and material culture.
Friday, November 13, 2015 - 11:00am Henne Autitorium
Freshman Seminar students will read Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken, watch the film, and then interview people who have used writing or the visual arts to reflect, recover, and remember the past. On November 13th, the guests will join us on campus for a presentation on stage, a question and answer segment facilitated by Freshman Seminar students, and lunch with the students. The campus and local community will be invited to attend the presentation and the question and answer segment.
Monday, November 16, 2015 - 5:30pm Humanities Center, 602 Cathedral of Learning
This lecture by Anthony Bogues (Brown University) is the first in a year-long series of events titled Globalizing the Human. The series will invite colleagues from the humanities and social sciences (and cognate professional schools) to jointly explore questions that highlight the urgency of thinking globally about the humanities and humanistically about globalization.
Wednesday, November 18, 2015 - 8:00pm
From Leonardo Da Vinci to Ernst Haeckel to James Turrell, artists and scientists have long collaborated to shape our understanding of what it means to be curious. This fruitful conversation between the humanities and the sciences continues to teach us new ways to formulate questions, conduct research, build narratives, discover, and explore. But what does it mean to be curious in the 21st century? How can we as artists, scientists, educators, and explorers encourage curiosity in ourselves and those around us? Can curiosity be learned? Can it be taught? We will investigate these questions through a series of four discussions featuring artists, scientists, and scholars from Pitt and the surrounding community.