Diversity and Decolonization in Teaching Russian Studies

This edited volume is the first to address diversity and decolonization in teaching Russian language, literature, and culture. For multicultural scholars and classrooms in both K-12 and higher education, the editors aim to expand representations of Russian speaker identities and Russian-speaking communities outside of Russia, as well as the culturally- and linguistically- diverse identities of students and scholars specializing in Russian within the US. Contributions provide concrete examples and philosophical approaches to present alternative ways to transform content and instruction in Russian Studies.

Chapter 1. Introduction.- Chapter 2. Historical, Cultural, and Ideological Ties Between African Americans and Russia.- Chapter 3. Colonial and Decolonial Impulses: Histories and Stories from Russian Studies Educators in the United States.- Chapter 4. The Invisible Teacher: Reflecting on the Teacher Identities and Classroom Practices of non-Russian Instructors of Russian.- Chapter 5. Un-Teaching the Nineteenth-Century Survey of Russian Literature.- Chapter 6. Teaching Pushkin in a Multiracial World.- Chapter 7. Decolonizing Russian Studies: Reexamining the Nineteenth-Century Literary Survey Course.- Chapter 8. Queer Russians in the American College Classroom.- Chapter 9. On Decolonizing the Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Classroom and Engaging with New Perspectives.- Chapter 10. Addressing LGBTQIA+ and Non-Binary Gender Identities in Russian L2 Classrooms: Approaches and Strategies.- Chapter 11. You Can’t Imagine: Ecologies of Empathy in the Post-Russia(n) Classroom.

Rachel Stauffer is Visiting Assistant Professor of Russian at Virginia Tech, USA.