Pittsburgh University Center for International Studies
At a time of mass displacement across the Middle East, Palestinian refugees of the 1948 war—and their descendants—remain at the center of the world’s longest-running, unresolved refugee situation. Approaching seventy years since the war that would become known as both the Israeli War of Independence and the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe), the longevity of the Palestinian refugee issue is widely linked to the failure of the official “peace process” that began in the 1990s with the purported aim of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Come join Younus Mirza with the University of Pittsburgh Jewish Studies Department for the last Jewish Studies Brown-Bag lunch colloquium for the semester.
University of Pittsburgh Department of Religious Studies
Join us for a panel discussion by Pitt students and alumni sharing their experiences of the intersection of religiosity and queer identity in modern life. Special focus will be placed on experiences at Pitt. Pizza and refreshments will be provided at 5:30.
University of Pittsburgh African Studies Program, Department of Africana Studies, Department of History, Global Studies Center
In this talk, Dr. Moses Ochonu, Professor of History at Vanderbilt University, will historicize the political, theological, and economic events and anxieties that produced the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria. He will deploy, as a structuring analytical device, the theological and polemical construct of munafunci (or hypocrisy). Munafunci is a recurring trope in the rhetorical claims of Muslim reformers and other critics of political and religious orthodoxies in Northern Nigeria.
Fr. Michael D. Calabria, OFM, is a Franciscan friar and the founding director of the Center for Arab and Islamic Studies at St. Bonaventure University. His most recent publication explores Mughal Art as a manifesto for Environmentalism in South Asia.
Global Studies, Pitt's Year of Diversity, Theatre Arts, Classics Departments University of Pittsburgh
12PM / Presentation and Talk with Photo-journalist Maranie Rae and Human Refuge(e)
- a platform providing first-hand stories from refugees around the world.
Cathedral of Learning, room 602
Lunch provided
Global Studies, Pitt's Year of Diversity, Theatre Arts, Classics Departments University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh Perspectives, featuring Leslie Aizenman, Director of Refugee and Immigrant Services, Jewish Family and Children's Services; Wiam Younes (Computer Sciences) co-founder of Pittsburgh Refugee Center; Kristen Tsapis, Community Volunteer, Somali Bantu Community Association; Jenna Baron, Executive Director, ARYSE; Jaime Turek, Senior Reception & Placement Cast Manager at Northern Area Multi-Service Center; and members of the local Syrian community, moderated by Lisa R. Bromberg (Global Studies).
Posvar Hall, room 4130
Evening reception
Duquesne University Consortium for Christian-Muslim Dialogue
Come join Siavash Asadi, Ph.D. for a reflection on Salvation: Atonement and Intercession in Christian & Islamic Thought as part of the Religion & Society Series.
Pittsburgh Social Movements Forum, Department of Sociology, Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, Faculty Research and Scholarship Program
In the absence of formal protection, how do communities living in refugee camps protect assets and buffer against outsider predation? Using interviews with 200 Palestinian refugees in camps across Lebanon and Jordan, memoirs, and United Nations Relief Works Agency archives, Nadya Haj, an Assistant Professor of Political Science and Middle East Studies at Wellesley College, traces the evolution of property rights from informal understandings of ownership to formal legal claims of assets and resources.
University of Pittsburgh Department of Religious Studies
In her now-classic 1981 essay “The Uses of Anger,” Audre Lorde commends anger as a force that allows us to attend to histories of structural oppression. In particular, she urges women of color to name and speak their anger aloud and challenges white feminists to hear it without getting defensive. Meeting Lorde’s charge—to tarry with anger—remains no less urgent and no less discomforting today than it was when she issued her call in 1981. A call to and for anger may even seem counter-intuitive and counter-productive in the age of Trump.