Pitt Study Abroad Office starts new Panther Program

A Pitt music professor will see her study abroad program off on its maiden voyage this… A Pitt music professor will see her study abroad program off on its maiden voyage this summer.

After a conversation with her travel-agent mother two years ago, Adriana Helbig began concocting plans for pitching the Romani Music, Culture and Human Rights study abroad program to the University.

Pitt approved the first-of-its-kind study abroad program, which focuses on the culture of Romanis, commonly referred to as gypsies. Helbig will take 12 Pitt students on the two-and-a-half week Panther Program this May.

For Helbig, the issue of the role of the Roma community in Eastern Europe is a “hot topic” politically, socially and musically. She said she thinks it’s pertinent to all students in that it can serve as a “wake-up call,” encouraging awareness of the substandard conditions of Roma neighborhoods throughout Europe.

“It’s a growing experience, and all of the students that are going are extremely passionate,” Helbig said. “The trip will pull the rug out from the experiences they may have had abroad before.”

While the application deadline has hit for this summer, the Study Abroad Office will continue to offer the program, which costs $3,850 for in-state students and $4,050 for out-of-state students, next May.

On May 26, the students will leave for Prague in the Czech Republic and get their first taste of Romani music at the Khamoro World Roma Festival before continuing on to three other cities.

“This Khamoro Festival is a very positive attempt to create an identity and reinforce a sense of pride among Europe’s most discriminated group of people,” Helbig said.

While in the Czech Republic, Helbig said the group will combine with a group of Czech students led by Zuzana Jurková of Charles University in Prague.

After leaving the Czech Republic, Helbig said students will “engage in Roma Holocaust history” by traveling to Poland. While in the country, Helbig said students will tour a Romani museum in Tarkow as well as Auschwitz, a former Nazi concentration camp.

Finally, Helbig said the Pitt and Charles University students will have the opportunity to take day trips into urban and rural Roma communities in Kosice in eastern Slovakia.

Pitt sophomore Lisa Wojciechowicz said she originally became interested in the program through Helbig’s Gypsy Music class. She decided to sign up for it after she attended a Romani music symposium last year.

“I would say that besides the music festival, [I look forward to] meeting and interacting with Romani in Slovakia,” Wojciechowicz said.

Vera Sebulsky, manager of the program from Pitt’s Center for Russian and Eastern European Studies, said the two-year process to get a study abroad program approved includes approval from Pitt’s legal department and approval as an actual course from the University.

Students participating in the trip will receive three credits.

Sebulsky said that along with helping to organize the trip, she also plans to travel with the students this summer.

“I’ll be making sure that students are safe and keeping contact with their parents so that the professor is able to focus on teaching,” Sebulsky said.

Helbig, an ethnomusicologist, said her field of study focuses on the relation between music and society as well as cultural processes in relation to musical expression. She said this new study abroad program promotes those relationships.

“You’re looking at musical processes as they interact with the broader sociopolitical perspectives,” Helbig said.