My Job is to Challenge Students to Think in Clear and Systematic Ways
Ashley Squires, Director of the NES Writing and Communication Center, Assistant Professor at the New Economic School, answers Joint program student Victoria Zimina's questions on teaching at the Joint program, research and other aspects of academic life of a professor of humanities in an economics environment
What are the aims of your courses on the Joint HSE-NES program?
I teach two types of courses. One is the Advanced College Writing course, which is a required course. And then I teach elective courses that are mostly literature or culture focused. So, when I am setting the objectives for the writing course, I think primarily in terms of what kind of skills students are going to need, going from my course into other courses, not only in the Joint program but potentially thereon. So, I focus on skills like the ability to look at academic articles and to cite them properly in a text, or writing a research paper, that sort of thing. When I am teaching an elective course, so, let's say a literature course, I recognize that many students are taking it only to fulfill the English requirement. However, I want students to walk away with knowledge and skills specific to my discipline. So, I think of what the fundamental skills are and what the fundamental knowledge base is that I want students to leave my class with. That is how I would describe it.
What do you consider to be the most important in your job?
I think that the most important part of my job is to challenge students to think in more clear and systematic ways and to express their positions, their ideas and their arguments in ways that show respect for others, but also communicate their ideas with clarity and with integrity. I hope that students are able to sort of remain true to themselves and what they think but also recognize the need to be accountable to a bigger audience.
And is it right for both types of your courses?
Yeah, I think so. I mean, both of my courses and assignments that I set for them are very largely about teaching students to pose their own research questions and to investigate topics that are of interest for them. But then to communicate the findings and the results of their inquiry in a way that is responsible, in a way that is interesting to an outside audience, with the big sense that they have to make people care about what they have to say.
Is your job now like what you have expected during your Ph.D. time?
Well, I did not know I would be teaching in the Joint program. But I think, yes. The teaching that I am doing here is very much like what I imagined myself doing when I was a graduate student.
What research area are you interested in?
I am doing a couple of different things.
One is that in the Writing center space. People who run writing centers primarily have backgrounds in Humanities fields. Literature is the big one. And in the literature field, we are not taught how to use social science methods, because it is a completely different discipline. But, nevertheless, there is a growing interest in applying more quantitative methodologies to understanding writing centers. So, I am interested in that. And right now, I am doing some analysis on data that I gathered from our own Writing center on what are the characteristics of students who use the Writing Center and how they do in school. So that is what I am doing when it comes to the Writing center stuff.
Another thing I am interested in is also using digital methods to understand how literature is perceived around the globe. And, in particular, I am looking at how American texts have been perceived in Russia. And now I am concentrating on American novels that are much more popular in Russia than they are in the United States.
Have you changed your professional interests since you had been a Ph.D. student?
Oh, yes, of course, absolutely, and I think it happens with everyone. And I think that being here has exposed me to things which I would not have thought of otherwise, so like the research I was talking about, looking at American texts in Russia, I only became interested in that because students were telling me that they have read books that nobody in the United States reads. So, for example, Theodore Dreiser’s The Financier seems to be very popular in Russia, especially, among economics students. But we don't read it that often, you know. It is hard to find anyone in America who has read it and who is not a member of the Theodore Dreiser Society. So, that was very interesting to me and led me to other cases like Jack London and Gone with the Wind, all these other books that appear to kind of migrated: their readership is over here, not so much in the US anymore. And I am trying to look at why. I would never have known to look into that if I hadn’t moved over here.
Why is it important for you personally?
First of all, I am just interested in books and people who read books. But I think, actually, understanding what people read and why is a way of understanding those people. And I think that it is an important time for Americans to try to understand Russian people and for Russian people to understand American people. And it makes that kind of project naturally attractive. You know, probing really hard into what books do people read often happens to bring absolutely surprising answers.
Have you ever needed to dig into the Russian history to find the answers?
Yeah, I have, for example, looked into when the first foreign novels started to be published in Russia way back at the end of the 19th century, as a result of a growth in literacy after the Great Reforms, and there was a favorable market for adventure literature that opened up and that helps to explain why James Fenimore Cooper wound up being a very popular author in 19th century in Russia. And I looked back at historical literary criticism, Soviet literary criticism of some of these authors like Dreiser and Jack London who were allowed to be published in the Soviet Union because of their political beliefs. History obviously plays a big role in it. I am also interested, though, in looking more at the modern people, because I think that history helps explain why books were available, but it can’t explain why they are still being read. There are a lot of things that after the end of the Soviet Union were tossed aside right away. So, how do you explain why Dreiser actually still interests people even now? The Financier is an interesting book because it is about capitalism, you know, even though it is very critical about capitalism, modern Russian readers seem to be reading it like a kind of a Bible of finance. And I have gathered data from conversations with students, but I also want to approach this question more systematically, so like by aggregating online reviews on those books, and examining repeated patterns in these reviews.
Do you plan to include some kind of grouping in your research? I mean, do you plan to divide readers according to their gender, age etc.?
That would be a sort of a next step, yeah. I am hoping to get to something like that in the fall. I need time. (Laugh) I haven’t had time to get back to this particular project in a couple of months. Hopefully, in the fall. Actually, I have a lot of ideas and some difficulty in focusing on just one and getting a project completed. I almost kind of need somebody to come along and say "I need you to submit this article on this day" in order to force me to focus on just that because otherwise I constantly want to start a new project. (Laugh)
Then, maybe, we can approach this question mostly in terms of opportunities to do research, to get data and in terms of the atmosphere inside the academic society, not in terms of university environment?
Here students specialize a lot earlier and work a lot harder than they do in the US. I have seen a lot of students, who were putting together all docs for their job application, and they were pretty anxious about translating certain points in their CV because they wanted to be really specific about what math field they do know. That was a kind of ridiculous for me! (Laugh) I do not say it to offend someone, of course. I just think that here students are more worried about changing their interests than they should be. For one thing, you are very young, and when you are young, that is the time to be open to change, that is the time to explore new possibilities. When you are be older, that is the time when you can prioritize. (Laugh) In terms of the academic environment: my job is not primarily a research job. So, I do research mostly because I like doing it, and in my position, I am mostly evaluated on the basis of my teaching. For that reason, it is hard for me to describe problems of the typical researcher in Russia. I have a lot of autonomy in the Joint program and I have nothing to complain about at all.