CARLA
Gender by Advice: Normative Behaviors for Men and Women in Russian Advice Literature 


Submitted by Olga Livshin

Language: Russian
Unit Cultural Theme or
Academic Content Area:

Identity

Target Audience:

Traditional Post-Secondary
Year of Instruction: 4

Proficiency Level:

Advanced High

Standards:

Communication:   

1.1, 1.2, 1.3

Cultures:   

2.1

Connections:   

3.1, 3.2

Comparisons:   

4.1, 4.2

Communities:   

Unit Timeframe:

10-12 periods of 50 minutes each (the number of periods depends on the number of students in the class, since adequate time will need to be allotted to all students' final presentations)

Unit Overview:

Undergraduate students typically have a relatively simple view of gender. Their education and the culture around them might emphasize gender equality, but not the understanding of how the ideas and expectations of gender are formed and propagated. This unit aims to diversify the students' understanding of gender in the context of the Russian culture by offering contrasting points of view of different authors and leading students to identify differences between beliefs and practices.

Context:

This unit may be used within a course on Russian culture for fourth-year Russian students at the university level.

General Unit References and Resources:

Content. This unit introduces students to the expectations for the behavior of men and women through beliefs and practices present in the Russian culture. After being introduced to the basic idea of gender, students familiarize themselves with a number of gender stereotypes and learn that many people in the Russian culture believe in gender stereotypes staunchly. Nevertheless, a number of  current practices for men and women in Russia diverge from these stereotypes, varying significantly by milieu. Students learn about these practices by completing a Webquest and analyzing a text taken off a site for Russian masculine ("butch") lesbians. The culminating project for the unit is a PowerPoint presentation in which students analyze gender-specific normative qualities and behavior norms in advice literature (such as articles in magazines and online and advice books). Students prepare for this final project in the last lessons of the unit by analyzing the typical features of advice texts and discussing the role that various advice texts play with relation to the social beliefs about gender. 

Language. The main areas of language learning targeted by this unit are:

  • Learning and using in context the basic terms of gender studies (i.e., "gender norms," "biodeterminism," "femininity," etc.)
  • Using and expanding the students' knowledge of vocabulary for character traits (i.e., "tact")
  • Learning in context the verbs for explaining the relation of a text to a culture/society that produced it, the author, or the readers (i.e., the Russian expressions for "to be formed" and "to form," "to be reflected" and "to reflect")
  • Learning and using in the final presentation the structures that allow students to identify and present the point of view of an article's author (e.g., the Russian expression for "according to the author") and for  contrasting / discussing differences in the points of view made in two texts (e.g. the Russian expression for "whereas")

Resources for this Unit:

Resources about Gender in Russia for Further Research

  • Barta, Peter I., editor. Gender and Sexuality in Russian Civilization. London and New York: Routledge, 2001.
  • Costlow, Jane T., Stephanie Sandler, and Judith Vowles, editors. Sexuality and the Body in Russian Culture. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993.
  • Malysheva, M.M., editor. Gendernyi kaleidoskop [Gender Kaleidoscope]. Moscow: Akademiia, 2001.

Links or files for unit content:     A new window will open for each lesson.

Lesson 1. Sex, Gender, Gender Norms
Lesson 2: Gender Stereotypes in Russian Culture
Lesson 3: Russian Gender Beyond the Stereotypes
Lesson 4: Gender at Work: Advice Texts Written for Russian Female Managers and Executives
Unit Assessment
A Unit from the CoBaLTT Project
/cobaltt
Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition
University of Minnesota