Оригинал материала
GENDER EDUCATION
Constructive Dialogue: The Freedom To Be Oneself
by Zoya Khotkina, candidate of economics, director of the Russian summer school for gender studies
[This is a condensed version of the article]
The Russian summer school for gender studies is a model of a new alternative democratic form of education. Its purpose is to help develop women's and gender studies and introduce them into Russia's higher educational system and on the basis of this, to enlighten and bring about a democratic transformation of our society. What is new about this project is first all the subject itself, a new progressive direction in the humanities. As an alternative, it is not so much the conveying of knowledge on gender issues as it is a process of perceiving the world, oneself, each another, scholarship and methodology through the prism of gender, and thereby taking its participants to a higher level of creative thinking. ... The summer school is a project of the Moscow Center For Gender Studies and is financed by the Ford Foundation of the USA. For the first one, "Valdai-96," our partner was Tver' University and for the second one, "Volga-97," it was Samara University and for the third school, "Azov-98," Rostov University is our partner.
Everyone agreed the summer school should take place in a quiet environment conducive to discussion. Tver' was a good first choice because the Moscow Center for Gender Studies had long experience of cooperation with women in Tver' who were linked to the university. By the time of choosing the site for the third one, two universities competed -- Kuban' and Rostov, and we choose the latter because the university held out the prospect of introducing a gender studies course into its curriculum and perhaps even opening a gender center. In each summer school there were about 50 participants chosen through a competitive application process ( with two-three applicants for each place) plus the guest lecturers, the staff, and the children who came along -- altogether about 75 people. They included scholars, lecturers, students and graduate students from different disciplines (economists, sociologists, historians, linguists, psychologists and even journalists) and from some 33 Russian cities overall, as well as colleagues from Europe, the USA, and other parts of the former Soviet Union. They had to be already involved in women's and gender studies or to have an interest in becoming involved.
We wanted the participating foreigners to have fluent Russian, if possible, so as not to slow down the dialogue, since our main task was to elaborate our own "native" feminist discourse and methodology and to work on the gender problems of our Russian and post-Soviet mentality and society. Of course Western scholars did share with us their own rich experience. Here are three comments on the approach we took.
Valentina Uspenskaya: "The school showed that in Russia there is a developing intellectual strength in women's and gender studies which so far is hardly integrated into the system of contemporary education."
Nadezhda Azhgikhina: "... Many were surprised to learn that in various regions new centers have sprung up independent of one another -- economic, cultural, political, historical. It was also encouraging that the summer school discussion, unlike many previous gatherings, did not focus on the West but on our own Russian experience and conflict of ideas, and on asserting our own positions."
Olga Voronina: "The researchers and lecturers who took part are innovators (but not novices) in their disciplines. Their lectures and seminars are as a rule based not only on their familiarity with Western literature, but on the results of their own theoretical and empirical work."
The feminist conception underlying the summer school excludes any subordination and dividing of people into "teachers and taught." Everyone is here in three roles: as teacher when giving a talk or a seminar or conducting an exercise; as student when listening to others; and as active participant in discussion on an equal basis with others. It was the interaction of different personalities, not of student-teacher. The school was very intense. One participant wrote in her evaluation, "In two weeks I learned as much as I would have in half a year of sitting in the library." The organizational forms of learning were no less important that the content. We understood that you can't put new wine into old containers, so to speak, but those new forms had to be created along the way. As Laura Engelstein from Princeton University commented, the organizers were very competent and flexible, responding to problems as they arose, making adjustments in the program to meet participants' needs. Creating a study program for the summer school was a many-faceted many-level process. What would do for a university course or a conference would never work here. Imposing from above could kill the spirit of creativity and the whole process of self-realization and reflection that is central here. Once the participants were chosen, they told us what themes interested them (for example, women in literature, women in history, etc.). Then we together decided on the organizational forms of study (lecture, roundtable discussion, role-playing, etc.) Certain lectures and seminars for everyone were planned in advance. The usual "school day" began with lectures. After the midday meal came a rest period, a study period and library time. Before and after supper there were seminars, training exercises, individual projects and presentations, roundtables and discussion. Alexander Mishchenko, a teacher at the Civil Service Academy in St. Petersburg, wrote in his evaluation of the school, "It was very nice to see the young inspired faces of the graduate students ready to go at it for 24 hours a day."
The first school was put together in a very short time, from conception to realization. We learned from this experience and the second time we chose people who were already committed to gender studies and who could through their teaching and publishing communicate to others what they would learn in the summer school. So "Volga-97" was on a higher level.
The conception of the third school is different, focusing on social problems:
l. Women's Rights: from international norms to Russian realities.
2. The status of women in Russian society, economics, politics, and family.
3. The image of women in literature, history, art, and the mass media.
4. Questions of methods and methodology in gender research and in the teaching of gender studies at the university level. Taking a problem approach has some advantages.
First of all it opens up the interdisciplinary character of gender research. Secondly, university women's studies in the West are oriented not only to analysis but to the search for solutions to real social problems. In this sense the third summer school enables us to take yet another step in developing the humanistic ideas of gender studies and research. Those leading the discussions in the four problem areas listed above are experienced women in their fields: Tatiana Gerasimova (St. Petersburg), Elena Goroshko (Kharkov), Elena Mashkova (Naberezhnye Chelny), Valerie Sperling (USA), Nadezhda Azhgikhina and Elena Trofimova, Natalia Pushareva and Olga Maslova (all from Moscow). What is most important and valuable in this whole project? First of all, that in the summer schools we were able to practice the principles that distinguish gender studies from traditional academic disciplines -- the interdisciplinary, non-hierarchical, egalitarian, and creative aspects. We were simultaneously forming a new community of gender scholars, and conceptualizing and developing a Russian gender subject matter and methodology-- two processes linked to one another.
Secondly, some of the students in the school volunteered to keep a daily diary of observations and impressions, of what it felt like to be participating in the summer school. We hope to print up parts of these diaries so others can benefit from them. Finally, it should be said there was a lot of humor in the summer schools -- poems, parodies, songs, theatrical presentations, such as the one in "Volga-97" which put feminism "on trial," defending it from the unconvincing evidence discrediting it. What gave the participants the energy to go at it almost 24 hours a day was "the possibility to be oneself," as one student wrote. It is hard to find words to describe the unique atmosphere of dedication and self realization that prevailed here.
We can already enumerate some results from the first two summer schools:
* Overcoming the information vacuum. We learned who is doing what and where in gender studies in Russia.
* Creating a network for distributing information. We now have a list of 250 addresses. We know what subjects people are researching and giving courses on.
* Publishing a booklet of lectures, reports, essays, and diary excerpts from the first summer school. Producing 20 short teaching videos from the first school as well as a documentary video on the whole experience.
* Starting to create an electronic library on gender studies. By comparison with Western Europe or America, we of course lag way behind, but that is not the case in Central and Eastern Europe where Russia can hold its own in this field. And our Western colleagues are very interested in what we are doing, as one could see from the attendance at panel discussions at such gatherings as the Network Women's Program of the Open Society Institute in Belgrade, and the 30th anniversary conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. (Editor's Note: This article was written before the third school took place in the summer of l998. This year there will not be a fourth summer school, as the funding has come to an end.)