Events

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.

Responding to the record low birthrate, in 2023, then Prime Minister Fumio Kishida declared Japan “on the brink of not being able to maintain social functions.” Seeing this as a crisis of social reproduction, he announced policies to incentivize young people into having children—to reembrace the family as the center of life/livelihood. As sociality continues to downsize in Japan—to single households, solo lifestyles, childless futures—the keynote asks how these changes affect the elderly who once counted on “the family” to both care for and bury them. 
Anne Allison’s research on contemporary issues in Japan spans the nightlife, popular culture, Pokémon, sexuality, gender, precarity, and death. She is the author of Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club; Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination; and Precarious Japan. Her most recent book, Being Dead Otherwise, has been awarded the John Whitney Hall Prize for 2025. 

Stop by the Global Hub to learn more about financial wellness!

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!

: Join the French Club on Tuesdays and Wednesdays during Spring semester for conversational meetings and to practice French speaking and listening skills and create a francophone community on campus!

Join us on Wednesdays in the Global Hub for casual Portuguese conversation!

This article is part of an ongoing ethnography of the Japanese television industry focusing on its attempts to experiment with live, interactive content that was manipulable via smart devices, laptops, and remote controls. Based on 18 months of fieldwork in the Japanese television industry in four major TV network offices and two production companies, it also incorporates interviews with more than 30 broadcast company employees. Using two case studies of early interactive television programming to discuss the strategies producers have used to create community and promote identification among audiences of these shows: ‘Arashi Feat. You’ was a live music event that courted a large audience through the involvement of a massively popular boy band and promoted the idea of ‘turning viewers into users’ by allowing them to play musical instruments along with the band. ‘The Last Award’ allowed participants to submit and evaluate each other’s videos live through a dedicated user interface. Through these examples, Rodwell argues that participation alters the nature of television spectacle and results in changes to the way producers address and inscribe audiences as cocreators of content. The rhetoric used by interactive television accordingly defaults to ‘we’ and ‘us’ and features accessible and relatable celebrities as surrogates for the audience.
Elizabeth Rodwell is a media anthropologist who is interested in interactivity, television, emergent technology (in general), and artificial intelligence (specifically). She is also a usability researcher (UX). My first book Push the Button: Interactive Television and Collaborative Journalism in Japan (forthcoming) examines the post-Fukushima tensions in the Japanese journalism and television industries, and seeks to account for the ways that media professionals are responding to increasingly skeptical and distracted audiences. She tracks the global debut of interactive television in Japan– a cutting-edge fusion of mediums that represented the most dramatic departure from existing television technology in several decades.

Join the German Club on Wednesdays during Spring semester for conversational meetings and to practice German speaking and listening skills.

Mangia con noi! Bring your lunch and chat with us! Pitt students only, all levels welcome!