AATSEEL 2021 Conference Program Presentation Abstracts SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2021 Session 1: 10:00am-12:00pm 1-1. Instructional Practice and Design for the 2020s: Inclusive and High-Impact Approaches to Language, Literature, and Culture Teaching for Liberal Arts Goals in the Literature and Culture in Translation Courses Benjamin Rifkin, Hofstra University In the context of a significant decline in the birth rate in the US that is and will continue to be correlated with reduced numbers of students entering college through at least the year 2030, it is increasingly important for Slavic language and culture programs to redouble efforts to attract and retain students in their classes. Our literature in translation classes will continue to attract students interested in Dostoevsky or Tolstoy, but that may not be enough in some institutions. In this presentation, I will describe how the teaching of Russian literature and culture can be taught in the context of larger liberal arts goals, integrating liberal arts learning tasks into the discussion of Russian cultural and literary history and stylistic analysis. To that end, my discussion will be informed by the discussion of the essential learning outcomes of the Liberal Education and America’s Promise campaign of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (aacu.org/leap), high-impact practices in higher education (Kuh and Schneider, 2008), the notion of significant learning (Fink, 2013), analysis of student intellectual and personal development during the college years (Patton, Renn, Guido, and Hayes, 2016), and a framework for understanding student retention in college (Tinto, 2015). I will argue that course design informed by these conceptual frameworks will help increase student interest in and enrollment in courses dedicated to the exploration of Slavic literatures and cultures taught in translation and will help in student retention more broadly, enhancing institutional support for these programs at a time of declining enrollments in higher education nationally. Diversity and Inclusion in the Russian Language Classroom? Joan Chevalier, United States Naval Academy Recent events in the United States that have brought about the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement as a powerful force for social and political change have forced educators across a wide array of disciplines to reevaluate who, what, and how they teach. Our field is long 1 overdue for a critical appraisal of what diversity and inclusion means in our classrooms. There are two fundamental parts to the issue of diversity and inclusion: how we interact with students and course content. This paper focuses on the latter. The traditional approach to our discipline is rooted in the notion that since we are teaching Standard Russian, we should focus exclusively on Russian language and culture. The traditional approach is rooted in a kind of cultural chauvinism which at the very least deprives students of an understanding of what the Russian Federation (RF) is – a multiethnic and multilingual nation. At worst this approach, by ignoring the diverse cultures that speak Russian within the RF, reifies the cultural exclusion routinely experienced by indigenous communities within Russia. There is much to be gained by including non-Russian voices in our language classrooms. Students introduced to the diverse cultures that make up Russia get a more accurate sense of what the RF is. But how do we move discussions of diversity in Russia beyond the juxtaposition of russkii and rossiiskii? As researcher with several years of experience doing ethnographic research in Siberia, I will argue that a good place to begin is to introduce voices of indigenous youth from Russia. Indigenous youth in recent years have poignantly used music, often with humor, to articulate their identity struggles. What does it mean to be Russian? What does it mean to be ethnically and culturally non-Russian but be a citizen of the RF? Culturally and ethnically diverse youth in the United States are dealing with many of these same issues. By expanding our understanding of rossiiskii we can both enrich our students’ cultural literacy and expose them to timely cultural and social narratives that might resonate with their own. Think Tank for BIPOC Students Amarilis Lugo de Fabritz, Howard University This paper will talk about the point of inspiration for the US Russian Foundation – Howard University mentorship program, Diversifying the Russian Studies Field, which included a research think tank for undergraduate BIPOC students, as well as a cybersecurity simulation. It will also theorize about what shape it might take for its second cycle. Session 3: 2:00pm-4:00pm 3-1. Open Seminar with Thomas Garza (University of Texas - Austin): The Myth of «Шире круг»: Addressing Diversity and Intersectionality in the Teaching of Russian The venerable Soviet-era notion of the great, all-inclusive «многонациональная» country and culture of the USSR was a central part of the narrative created by a Russian hegemony for most of the 20th century. Reflected in the cultural iconography such as civic poster images and popular children’s songs that depicted a Russo-centric utopic imaginary of diverse creatures all playing in harmony, the myth of Soviet acceptance of cultures other than Russian belied the actual practices of the period, including in language pedagogy. Most Russian language textbooks reflected a monolithic Russian culture that was white, educated, relatively affluent, and heteronormative. Such a portrait of the Russian reality, which continues to be presented to learners of the language 2 and culture in the 2000s, not only excludes crucial demographic segments of the Russian population domestically, but also fails to connect with the diverse profiles and identities of learners outside of Russia. The shift in public awareness of pervasive institutional prejudices in the spring of 2020 has provided the impetus to review and change practices in the academy, including in language and culture instruction. From the groundbreaking work of Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968) to the recent discussion of Reagan and Osborn (2021) in their search for “the promise of social justice” in world language education, critical pedagogies strive to rupture the institutionalized colonial yoke pervasive in much of world language education. From course curricula to current textbooks to online virtual learning environments, much of the content and delivery of world language classes remains steeped in the ideological and material context of colonial hegemony, creating barriers and obstacles in our courses for learners and instructors alike. This workshop will offer models and practices necessary to reimagine and “decolonize” our Russian language and culture courses. Participants will be asked to engage critically with sample materials and methods of language courses probably already familiar to them, as well as to examine models of new courses in Russian language and culture. The goal of the workshop is to equip participants to review their own modes and materials of language and culture instruction and then recast them into new iterations informed by critical pedagogies, creating curricula and courses that are more inclusive, diverse, and intersectional. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2021 Session 5: 9:00am-11:00am 5-1. Digital Directions in Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies: Collaboration, Platforms, Visibility Digital Humanities, Libraries, and the Global Classroom Vlad Beronja and Ian Goodale, University of Texas at Austin Our paper, “Digital Humanities, Libraries, and the Global Classroom” will focus on the intersection between digital humanities practice and critical global pedagogy in classes taught for undergraduates and graduate students, looking at the ways in which students, librarians, and faculty collaborate in culturally and discipline-specific DH projects within a classroom setting. We will explore how this collaboration between faculty, librarians, and students can become an integral part of class design and global pedagogical practice, as well as how the DH work influences traditional pedagogical methods and reinforces--and challenges--other ways of teaching in the classroom. We will also address questions of how labor contributed by students to DH projects is honored and acknowledged, and how the DH work is designed as a dual pedagogical tool: one that simultaneously reinforces the readings and written assignments of the course and broadens the skillsets of the students by incorporating instruction related to unfamiliar, digital technologies and methodologies. Special focus will be placed on the field of Slavic studies and the ways in which DH assignments can foster specific cultural and regional knowledge within a wider global framework. 3 Digital Archives and Other forms of Digital Research Joan Neuberger, University of Texas at Austin Russian language repositories have been in the forefront of digitizing archival documents and archival finding aids but making the transition to using those archives as a substantial portion of historical and cultural research —a necessity for some, in the era of Covid -- is not always a seamless process. I will discuss the project that the Eisenstein International Network has been working on to make research on Eisenstein-related topics more accessible, and suggest ways these might be useful for researchers in other fields. Re-Imagining Digital Humanities and Russian and East European Studies after 2020 Marijeta