“I was fascinated by the fact that Russians read Dreiser far more than Americans do”

Laura Ashley Squires, Director, Writing and Communications Center at New Economic School speaks about her experience with the HSE - NES Joint program in economics

Ashley has been teaching in the HSE - NES Joint program in economics for two years in a row. Her case is unusual in that she had the opportunity to meet her future students before coming to work in Moscow. Ashley taught at the first and second summer schools in Austin, TX, being herself a PhD candidate at UT in summer 2012 and 2013. Her students were the class of 2015 and class of 2016, and the course was Introduction to American Literature. In Moscow her students were expected to read such novels as Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird,James Baldwin’s Go Tell it on the Mountain,and Ursula LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness.Over the course of three weeks in Austin in July they discussed the books and their influence on American society.

 Ashley, how much did the teaching at the summer schools influence your commitment to work in Moscow?

 I think it's pretty safe to say that I would not be here otherwise. I had no connection to Russia before then, and it was my positive impression of the joint program students that prompted me to submit an application when a full-time position became available. (Ok, that and a sense of adventure.) I've always had an interest in Russian history and culture, particularly music and literature, but it wasn't really "Russia" that brought me here. It was the school and the students.

This is your third year teaching in the joint program. What courses do you teach there? Why those?

My biggest responsibility teaching-wise is Advanced College Writing, which is really the joint program's version of what we would call "Freshman Comp" in the United States. It's a required, foundational course that acclimates students to norms of academic writing in English, but it is also a course that helps students develop skills in finding and evaluating information, structuring arguments, and communicating with different types of audiences. It's a very important course that I am passionate about teaching.

 

During the Spring term, I typically teach electives that I hope will be interesting to joint program students and to me. My area of specialty is American religion and literary history, and I taught a few of courses on this topic in the US. I proposed a course called "Religion and the Making of American Culture" to the joint program because I thought this would be an interesting and novel topic for Russian students. I wound up teaching it two years in a row because the demand was so high.

 

This year, I am also teaching a course called "Theodore Dreiser in International Perspective" as a kind of experiment. Living in Russia has increased my interest in cross-cultural methods of teaching and conducting research in literature fields. I was fascinated by the fact that Russians read Dreiser far more than Americans do. As a researcher, I wanted to find out why, and as a teacher, I thought it would be an interesting challenge to teach a piece of the literary canon from the point of view of its importance in a country other than the one in which it was written. This upsets conventional ideas about what a national literature really is and serves as a compelling illustration of the ways cultural ideas travel and take on new meanings in different contexts.

 

Why do Russians need Academic Writing courses taught in English by Americans?

 

There are a lot of terms that need to be unpacked here. I don't think "Russians" as a group need to be taught academic writing in English by Americans. The constituency for this kind of content will be people who have particular goals in mind. No matter what their background, those wishing to work for international firms or to go abroad for graduate study will need to not only be competent in English but to be familiar with the communicative norms of English-speaking academia and the English-speaking business world. There are vast differences in the ways academic articles are written in Russian vs. English, for example.

 

As for "by Americans," I'm not sure that there's anything magical about that. I think the mystique of the "native speaker" is a little overdetermined, but I suppose there is something to it. Beyond that, the field of Rhetoric and Composition and/or Writing Studies in the United States has simply developed a really robust and versatile set of principles and methods for teaching people to write better. It's a very active and lively conversation. And many people I have talked to in Russia seem to feel that the teaching of writing in their country leaves something to be desired. If we want to speak in economic terms, I have a skill and a knowledge-based for which there is a demand in Russia, and that's why I'm here. But I think part of my role should be to help Russian educators who are looking to try something new and different. If Russian universities want to hire Americans to come teach writing, I think that would be great (but very expensive), but Russian universities should also find what works for them and seek to develop the talent that exists here.

 

 

What do you think of the program and the students?

 

My opinion of the program is very high. As a graduate of a liberal arts college myself, the community feel of the program (where most students know each other) feels like a return home after eight years at a giant state university. The students are outstanding. I find them to be highly motivated and intellectually curious, and I have learned a great deal from them.

 

 

Since Spring 2013, Center for Russian, Eastern European & Eurasian Studies at UT has been inviting UT students and alumni to visit the Faculty of Economic Sciences for a semester, take a course in the joint program, TA or contribute to WCC consultations. What do you think about the Texan interns that the joint program enjoys having?

 

I love it. The Texas interns do fantastic work in the writing center and as teaching assistants, so the joint program gets a ton of value out of them. The role of the "peer tutor" is a really central one in most Western writing centers, and this is the predominant way in which we've tried to replicate that. Since the interns are close in age to our students, I think they relate to them in different ways than professors, and the opportunities for both the interns and the students to learn from each other are really valuable.