Resources for Teaching about Kazakhstan

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Brief Description

In recent years, in connection with broader attempts to decentralize and decolonize Russian language curricula, instructors of Russian have increasingly turned to Kazakhstan as a country with a large Russian-speaking population. Similarly, Kazakhstan has come to the forefront as a destination for study abroad. In this process of decentralization, a clear need to broadcast and magnify local voices has emerged, to ensure that in the process of decolonization we do not perpetuate frameworks of coloniality.This roundtable offers curated resources to address this need. First, Sabina Amanbayeva’s contribution, based in part on interviews with Kazakhstani animation directors, will address film and animation, showing how students can learn about modern Kazakhstan through the values and ideologies that these visual media promote. Gulnara Glowacki will then speak about the Flagship Culture Initiative materials, including a Scenarios Workshop using Russian-language materials, which enables students to consider processes of acculturation in advance of study abroad. Susan Kresin will then turn to independent media sources based in Kazakhstan, suggesting ways to integrate these perspectives for both language study and individuated study abroad preparation, while also contributing to students’ media literacy in the Russian-language media sphere. Ulbossyn Parmanova will present resources and materials that she has developed based on a review of current Kazakh textbooks and her experiences teaching in the United States. Rounding up the panel, Isabella Prenger will speak from a study abroad alumna’s perspective about Russian-language materials on Kazakhstan in connection with her year-long study in Almaty in the Russian Overseas Flagship Program.

Sub Unit

• Linguistics/Language Pedagogy/Translation

Chair

• Karen Joan Evans-Romaine, U of Wisconsin-Madison

Roundtable Speakers

• Sabina Amanbayeva, Oklahoma City U

• Gulnara Glowacki, U of Wisconsin-Madison

• Susan C. Kresin, UCLA

• Ulbossyn Parmanova, U of Georgia

• Isabella Prenger, U of Wisconsin-Madison