PROG. INFO.- The Soviet in Everyday Life (ReSET)
Posted by: Laura Adams (soviet.reset(at)gmail.com)
 
Dear Colleagues:
 
We have re-opened the application process for potential participants in
a Regional Seminar for Excellence in Teaching (ReSET) project on "The
Soviet in Everyday Life."  

Participants should be teaching at the undergraduate university level in
the former Soviet Union and Mongolia.  The deadline for new applications
is 1 June, 2010. Please see details below.
 
If you know of someone who might be interested in participating, we
would be grateful if you would pass this information on to them.
 
Sincerely,
 
Laura Adams
Gulnara Aitpaeva
Aida Alymbaeva
Co-Directors
===============================

Open Society Institute
Higher Education Support Program, Regional Seminar for Excellence in
Teaching

call for participation

THE SOVIET IN EVERYDAY LIFE

Participants' Eligibility:

Disciplines:    Anthropology, History, Sociology, Cultural Studies
(Film/Literature), Area Studies, Communication/Media Studies, Geography,
Political Science

Target Region: Participants are being recruited from all the former
Soviet Union and Mongolia (participants from the Baltics cannot receive
full financial support).

Academic standing/level/prerequisites: Junior faculty, broadly defined.
A teaching position in an institution of higher education, completion of
a kandidat or Ph.D. degree no earlier than 2000. Preference will be
given to those whose degrees were received in 2005 or later.

Time commitment: Summer 2010-Summer 2013

Other criteria:   Reading proficiency in English and fluency in 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.

Application information:
To download an application or for more information in Russian see:
http://www.aigine.kg/Articles/ViewSection.aspx?ArticleID=339
Deadline: 1 June 2010 (late applications will be accepted but may not be
given full consideration)

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 junior 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 in general, see
http://www.soros.org/initiatives/hesp/focus/reset 

The focus of this ReSET project is the Soviet in everyday life, past and
present. 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 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 exchanging ideas, engaging in discussions and
lectures, and planning 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
for those who can find their 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 an MS Word file that you may download
from http://www.aigine.kg/Articles/ViewSection.aspx?ArticleID=339 or
that we will send you upon request (write to: soviet.reset(at)gmail.com)

Deadline:  1 June 2010  (late applications will be accepted but may not
be given full consideration)

Applications to be sent to:  soviet.reset(at)gmail.com

Stage one:     By the 1 June 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. The
final decision on participant selection will be made by 30 June 2010.

Program Information

Project years:                  2010-2013
Host institution:                Aigine Cultural Research Center,
Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan (www.aigine.kg)
Working languages:        Russian and English (proficiency in reading
required)
Co-directors:                    Laura Adams, Lecturer on Sociology,
Harvard University
                                          Aida Alymbaeva, Max Planck
Institute for Social Anthropology
                                          Gulnara Aitpaeva, Director,
Aigine Cultural Research Center

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
Jeff Sahadeo, Carleton University
Madeleine Reeves, University of Manchester