Cohort March 2023: Faculty of Arts – Ania Switzer, Mila Micovic, Roman Chelyuk, Tristan Maciulis, Jillian Marks, Elizabeth Elliott
Course background
SLAV 307A provides students with a broad overview of Eastern Europe, approaching this area as a productive site to interrogate the relationship between culture, history, and politics. Examining works of Eastern European film and literature from roughly the last century, the course explores questions of nation, race/ethnicity, gender, power, class, status, and identity as these have been variously expressed in the ever-changing landscape of ideology, political structures, and economic systems. Over the course of the semester, we examine different visual and textual practices and how they engage with social, cultural, and economic processes. What do the Eastern European cultural texts tell us about the world that we live in?
Global phenomena of the contemporary world, resulting from historical asymmetries, hierarchies, relationalities, and entanglements are part of the lived experience of the UBC student community. Eastern European cultural texts, while in many ways different from the ubiquitous Western productions, are often found relatable and illuminating by the diverse community of UBC students enrolling in this course. By presenting multiple perspectives and their contexts, SLAV307A assists our learning communities in developing skills that in turn allow them to contribute and inform debates about the pressing issues of our times. To do so effectively, SLAV307A needs to evolve.
Project details
SaP project offers a suitable framework to redesign course offerings, focusing on the cultural texts (including literature and film) that form the basis of our work. What do we need to do to promote the values of universal solidarity and empathy? What aspects and topics have been under-represented in this course? Which voices need to be amplified?
The ongoing calls for decolonisation reflected in the UBC Strategic Plan align with the recent developments in the field of Eastern European Studies, increasingly seeking to address the legacy of normative binaries imposed by the imperial world order that sought to neutralise and erase the differences of otherwise historically, linguistically, and culturally diverse countries of Eastern Europe. Intensified by growing interest in Eastern Europe spurred by the current events, in particular by the Russian war in Ukraine, our project seeks to redesign the SLAV307 course syllabus and amplify multiple perspectives of local cultures, presenting them in their relational context. Adopting a humanistic and multidisciplinary approach, the project aligns with the learning community’s desire for a deeper understanding of the most recent developments in Eastern Europe. As expressed in the Student Experience of Instruction Report (2022W1), learners are interested in “more (…) 21st-century info[rmation]” while recognising that it might be “hard to add that to an already packed course”.
This is because Eastern Europe is complex, and does not lend itself to packaging into readily-available typologies and classifications. Our project team is not afraid of this complexity. On the contrary, we feel challenged and encouraged by the vexing realities of Eastern Europe. We are excited for an opportunity to explore and present what people in the region think about themselves and the world, what they communicate to their audiences (including us), and how we respond to their messages.
SLAV307A employs a learner-centred and flexible approach, allowing adaptation to the evolving needs of our learning community, with a view on fostering equitable practices in a higher education setting. Our goal is for everyone in our learning community to feel included, from those who encounter Eastern Europe for the first time to those who have intimate links to the region. We all become contributing and collaborating partners in learning. Mindful of the ongoing external pressures and challenges, we consciously build class community and offer empathy and support to each other.
We see this project as our modest collaborative contribution to the ongoing global effort to restore the agency of historically marginalised people and ‘minor’ cultures. Doing so respectfully and inclusively models a form of engagement that is much needed in the pursuit of peace, social justice, and equity.