NOTE: The deadline is soon -- March 22. Applications received after
March 25 cannot be assured consideration. With questions, write to
Laura Adams at ladams(at)fas.harvard.edu.
Open Society Institute
Higher Education Support Program
Regional Seminar for Excellence in Teaching
Call For Participation - The Soviet in Everyday Life
Application information
To request an application, write to: soviet.reset(at)gmail.com
Deadline: 22 March 2010
For more information: http://www.aigine.kg/
Participants' Eligibility
Disciplines: Anthropology, History, Sociology, Cultural Studies
(Film/Literature), Area Studies, Communication/Media Studies,
Geography, Political Science
Target Region: All the former Soviet Union (excluding the Baltics) and
Mongolia.
Academic standing/level/prerequisites: Enrollment in a kandidatskaia
or Ph.D. program, or completion of either degree no earlier than
2005.
Time commitment: Summer 2010-Spring 2013 Other criteria: Reading and
listening proficiency in both English and
Russian; desire to develop a course or evidence of teaching a course
on this topic; desire to develop research or evidence of publishing
research on a related topic.
Overview of the Project
The focus of this ReSET project is the Soviet in everyday life, past and
present. In this project, we understand "the Soviet" to mean various
social formations that people recognize today as being "Soviet" as well
as other institutions and phenomena that relate to the Soviet
experience, whether or not they are called "Soviet" in everyday life
today. This three-year project is aimed at young faculty who are
interested in investigating the Soviet in everyday life, and bringing
this knowledge into their teaching. This Regional Seminar for Excellence
in Teaching (ReSET), like others, involves a group of about
25 younger faculty from the region -- in this case, the former Soviet
Union and Mongolia -- and a group of resource faculty who work together
over three years. We will meet for two weeks each summer, and for
several days in another meeting each year, probably in the spring, and
interact in other ways through the rest of the three-year period.
The goal is to pursue activities which will strengthen university-level
teaching. For more information on the ReSET program, see
http://www.soros.org/initiatives/hesp/focus/reset
Undergraduate curricula throughout the former Soviet Union vary both by
country and by discipline when it comes to how they deal with "the
Soviet." We invite young faculty to consider curricula of higher
education in their home countries in terms of how the study of the
Soviet is represented there, and through their own research and the
further development of courses related to the Soviet in everyday life.
In some countries, social science textbooks and the lecturers who use
them tend to avoid discussing the period entirely in order to avoid
making a political misstep. When social science and philosophy courses
do deal with the Soviet period, it is sometimes in simplistic and
politicized terms ("empire," "totalitarian" and "gulag" or conversely
"modernization" and "integration with the world through Russian
culture"). In many places, there is not enough discussion of how the
recent Soviet past can be studied for its influence on the present and
some scholars have the attitude that Soviet legacy is transparently
understandable and has no need of further research or scholarly
analysis. This can also be seen in the rejection of theoretical
approaches such as post-colonialism and post-socialism in scholarly
debates, where the consensus seems to be that each country had its own
Soviet experience that is amenable neither to theorizing nor to
comparison.
To contribute to the global scholarship on this topic and its
incorporation in contemporary undergraduate education, we will explore
the following questions: what are the effects that "the Soviet"
continues to produce in the realms of meaning, material culture,
organizational form, style of interaction, and so on? What do people
identify as Soviet and how do they position themselves in relation to
the Soviet, as connected/disconnected, longing/rejecting? What kinds of
things are not necessarily recognized as Soviet legacies, but which must
be understood as constituting socially significant continuity with
Soviet social order? What are some ways that we can make the actual
experiences of the late Soviet period more accessible to students so
that they can think critically about social change in their own
societies?
The theoretical focus of this project is on exploring the diversity of
experiences of the Soviet in the post-Soviet periphery, and on
complicating an overly politicized understanding of the Soviet. These
aims will be met through our choice of participants from different parts
of post-Soviet space, and our choice of methods, which will allow a
fine-grained exploration of everyday life: ethnography, oral history,
document and archival analysis, visual anthropology, and the analysis of
pedagogy in higher education today. Scholars involved in this project
will meet twice per year (two weeks in summer and up to five days in
early spring) for sharing of theory knowledge as well as for discussing
of their activities. During intersession time participants will work on
individual research and curriculum development projects that will
contribute to the state of knowledge about the Soviet in everyday life
throughout the former Soviet Union and across the supposed historical
divide of 1991. The activities of the project will be directed to
producing a special issue of a journal and a reader (for which we will
seek additional funding) in both Russian and English that can be used in
different disciplines and in different countries.
Provisions for participants
Costs related to the ReSET project, including travel expenses,
accommodation, meals and reading materials will be covered by the ReSET
by means of a grant from the Open Society Institute's Higher Education
Support Program. With the OSI grant, we are able to support full costs
of participation only in the case of participants from the target
region. However, participation may be possible for a small number of
"non-regional" participants with support from other sources (especially
if you can find your own support for transportation to the contact
sessions).
Application procedure
All applications and accompanying documents must be sent in electronic
format. The application itself is a MS Word file that we will send you
upon request (write to: soviet.reset(at)gmail.com)
Deadline: 22 March 2010
Applications to be sent to: soviet.reset(at)gmail.com Stage one: By the
22 March deadline, applicants should send a completed application form
along with a CV, a personal statement, a writing sample, a syllabus, a
letter of support and a description of English and Russian ability (see
the application for more details).
Stage two: Those applicants who pass through the initial screening will
be interviewed by telephone by one of the core faculty members in order
to assess their English and Russian ability. The final decision on
participant selection will be made by 1 May 2010.
Program Details
Project years: 2010-2013
Host institution: Aigine Cultural Research Center, Bishkek,
Kyrgyzstan (www.aigine.kg)
Co-directors: Laura Adams, Lecturer on Sociology, Harvard University,
Gulnara Aitpaeva, Director, Aigine Cultural Research Center, Aida
Alymbaeva, Senior Researcher, Aigine Cultural Research Center Working
languages: English and Russian (proficiency in both required) Core
faculty: Laura Adams, Lecturer, Harvard University, Gulnara
Aitpaeva, Director, Aigine Cultural Research Center, Serguei
Oushakine, Assistant Professor, Princeton University, John
Schoeberlein, Lecturer, Harvard University Other faculty: Galina
Orlova, Rostov State University, Anvarbek
Mokeev, Kyrgyz-Turkish Manas University, Tsypylma Darieva, Humboldt
University
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