Abstract
Over the past four terms as I have been teaching the course The Theory and Reality of Gender in the Post-Communist Era at the CIEE centre in Prague, the Czech Republic, to American students, a number of issues related to how authority is constructed within the classroom have surfaced. To name just a few – our pedagogical adviser has repeatedly warned me against squatting when talking to the students doing pair work (“You are too young and doing this can harm your authority”), I have faced pressure from the students to present “what the Czech gender order is like”, “what the Czech feminist scene is like”, and in general to provide reliable simplified information on a host of issues.
Working on the course syllabus reflects all these pressures and so does the topic of my dissertation (basically trying to answer the question what the Czech feminist/gender scene is like). In my presentation I will present various dilemmas I have faced over the course of two years (teaching the above-mentioned course to US students and a course on feminist sociology to Czech students), why I consider them troubling (referring to emotional work and ethics – Calhoun 1992, Hochschild 1983) and what are some of the responses I have come up with, mainly how the issues are presented (this includes not only the format – e.g. debates, but also such things as what I wear) and what sources I use.
After the short presentation (12 min maximum), I would like to move to an interactive strategy session using two very short articles (Šmejkalová-Strickland 1995, Šiklová 1997) as a springboard – the aim is to show how students typically use them and how that could be altered. The session will end in a short discussion.