Guest Opinion | Reflections on the course Women Unknown: Fight for Independence

Though the College of Iowa presents hundreds of courses for college students to take, a brand new course provided starting within the spring semester of 2020 brings a completely new and completely different strategy in direction of the concept of girls’s rights. This class is titled Ladies Unknown: Combat for Independence, and it’s taught by one of many college’s superb professors, Irina Kostina. Kostina, who was born and raised in Dagestan till the age of 12, obtained a International Curriculum Improvement Award for the proposal of this course.

She has years of lecturing expertise on the UI in addition to different universities around the globe; her major space of research consists of the Russian language, faith, and tradition. She is the director of undergraduate research on the college and affiliate professor of instruction. Kostina teaches a number of programs on the college, so it’s not unattainable to have her as a professor throughout your time on the college. I used to be lucky this semester to be on this course, which consisted of 32 college students.

On this course, we realized in regards to the previous and present points of girls’s rights within the Caucasus, which is a mountainous area positioned the place Europe, the Center East, and Asia meet. We studied how ladies’s rights within the North Caucasus area — violated up to now — have modified over time. We seemed particularly on the ladies in Dagestan. Dagestan is a republic of Russia, the capital and largest metropolis is Makhachkala, positioned on the coast of the Caspian Sea. It’s dwelling to a number of ethnicities, languages, and cultures. Nonetheless, the ladies there are confronted with violations that girls in America do probably not need to assume twice about.

All through the semester, we coated a number of subjects that Dagestani ladies expertise, some which might be nonetheless very a lot practiced as we speak. These subjects included abductions for marriage, early and organized marriages, polygamy, home violence, honor killings, ladies turning into devices of battle, blood feuds, and suicide terrorist.

A number of of those subjects have been delicate to debate however have been wanted to be addressed to boost consciousness for these ladies in Dagestan. Being from Dagestan, Kostina has a detailed connection to the Dagestani individuals with many family and friends who nonetheless reside there. Her grandfather, who was a surgeon,  was the primary individual to construct a hospital in Makhachkala the place he spent the remainder of his life there saving many lives. She says that Dagestan is an excellent land, with many fantastic individuals, the mountains are stunning, and the air is clear, these issues that girls face right here have to be talked about.

Kostina made positive that we might immerse ourselves within the Dagestani tradition by displaying us many movies of her household and buddies that she would interview about these delicate subjects.  She would additionally present us a number of movies depicting the Dagestani tradition and life from conventional dance performances to displaying the method of an organized marriage. To the interviews Kostina held with Dagestani buddies and kin, to the Dagestani music, motion pictures, and visitor audio system, the immersion didn’t cease there.

Everybody had the chance to interview people from Dagestan. Kostina has a cousin who’s a professor on the Dagestan State Technical College, and he or she was more than pleased to assist arrange these college students to be interviewed by our class.

The quantity of immersion on this class couldn’t have been any higher than what Kostina labored arduous to do, and he or she delivered. This course is a tremendous expertise for studying the historical past, lives, and tradition of the Dagestani individuals, however don’t simply take my phrase for it.

–Ekaterina Boucher

Earlier than I made a decision to hitch Ladies Unknown: Combat for Independence, I used to be initially caught by the identify of the category. It didn’t appear just like simply any ladies’s research class; “Ladies Unknown” struck me as a course with a much more distinctive perspective.

As a lady who’s lived in America my whole life, I believed that I knew what ladies have gone by within the historical past of this nation. However my information was restricted to ladies’s historical past within the U.S. I had no perception in any way to the previous and current obstacles that girls of the Caucasus area face.

We realized about many subjects relating to ladies’s standing in modernized areas of Dagestan by interviews with younger women and men from the world. I simply empathized with these individuals since we have been so shut in age. Having been given the chance to talk with younger Dagestani ladies and watch Kostina’s interviews, I recollect it being straightforward to establish with these ladies — their opinions on social points inside their society have been progressive and non-traditional.

When requested about their views on polygamy, a now uncommon follow in western society, these ladies mentioned they’ve seen this incidence or know somebody who has been affected by it. They held nothing again, sharing that they felt if a person feels the necessity to have multiple spouse for any motive, he should be capable of help all of them equally. Nonetheless, they mentioned they don’t really feel as if the fashionable follow is correct.

Concerning ladies’s position within the historical past of the Republic of Dagestan and the Caucasus mountains, there are numerous contrasting moments by which ladies’s roles inside completely different societies modified. In studying in regards to the custom of tattooing inside mountainous villages, this was very prevalent. Three are many causes that girls would mark themselves with this everlasting ink. Ladies have been perceived to be nearer to nature and would honor parts of nature at a much more private degree. These tattoos carried completely different meanings over time and in numerous villages. In some locations, tattoos have been used as face markings to make married ladies much less enticing to different males.

The motivation behind these acts seems in some ways inside communities in Dagestan. One other instance is the Muslim traditions of hijabs. There are different generally practiced marriage ceremony ceremonies that purpose at concealing the looks of girls for the only proven fact that they aren’t to be seen by males. In a captivating case research of a Miss Russia mannequin, her life was threatened and disgraced when she posed for the digital camera in only a swimsuit.

What I discovered fascinating and disappointingly widespread inside this and cultures in every single place all through the world is that these feedback can come from women and men alike, but all of them come from the long-standing ideology that males can’t management themselves round ladies. Due to this fact ladies are accountable and to cowl themselves.

In all the worldwide research subjects that I’ve coated in earlier courses, I’ve by no means realized something in regards to the Caucasus ladies. I hadn’t realized how closed off to such an immense and exquisite a part of the world that I used to be.

What Kostina has executed with this new course is simply that, giving us her imaginative and prescient into a spot that’s so acquainted to her as she plans numerous interviews, provides first-hand accounts and types of artwork to American college students whose training of worldwide cultures had been beforehand restricted.

Personally, I really feel as if I carry a way more insightful imaginative and prescient on feminism and the roles of girls inside a society that I didn’t know existed previous to this course. The significance of this course and the opportunity of extra prefer it needs to be acknowledged additional by the UI because it welcomes college students from all walks of life to proceed their training.

Whereas the UI employs many sensible professors from everywhere in the world with their very own tales and classes to share, why ought to it restrict training to the contents of only a textbook?

– Cassie Moeller

The most important differentiating issue between this course and others I’ve taken on the UI is the power to work together all through the semester with college students from one other nation. We talked to them at three completely different factors through the semester, and so they have been all sincere and beneficiant with their return messages about their lives. That is in part of the world that most individuals have no idea about, and it’s definitely rarer to have a chance to work together interpersonally with individuals from the world. This class gave the chance to ask powerful questions on the way in which the Caucasus tradition and society deal with ladies.

Regardless of the shutdown of world journey after the outbreak of COVID-19, college students from Dagestan might nonetheless work together with our class, and even reply questions on what quarantine and the outbreak of a world pandemic seemed like for them.

By way of the interviews, they might inform us about what they preferred and disliked about their nation, their day by day lives, in addition to how they felt about sure traditions. Listening to their ideas and opinions was a useful studying expertise.

Not solely did we work together with Dagestani college students, however we additionally had the chance to interview an creator who lived in Dagestan in addition to participated within the UI’s  Worldwide Program. Alisa Ganieva wrote a practical fiction novel about what Dagestan seems to be like as we speak. Within the unique launch of the ebook, it was printed underneath a male pseudonym, Gulla Khirachev, and her precise identify was by no means tied to the ebook till at a ceremony the place she accepted an award for it.

When requested in regards to the reception of the ebook in Dagestan in our interview, she talked about that the reception by the Dagestani individuals was poor, however not as a result of the ebook was inaccurate.

Her novel, which dives into the intersection of conventional Dagestani life in a modernizing world, was criticized for the way in which it portrayed Dagestan. Critics have been upset as a result of they didn’t need the remainder of the world to know a practical image of their nation.

They took it as airing their soiled laundry and weren’t supportive of Ganieva. Nonetheless, her detailed writing, the care she places into creating her characters, and the life like image she insisted on portraying, made her work celebrated internationally.

Speaking to an creator of this caliber not solely in regards to the work itself, however about her writing course of, and her personal life, was my private favourite a part of this course.

Along with these interviews, as beforehand talked about, our teacher was born and raised in Dagestan for 12 years of her life and visits continuously. Due to this, she has reside footage of conversations she has had with buddies in Dagestan, in addition to dwelling movies and photographs of the gorgeous landscapes that come out of the Caucasus Mountains. We interacted with artwork, literature, and movie created in Dagestan, most captioned, or translated by Kostina to make it accessible to us.

Kostina made each effort to carry the tradition of Dagestan into our classroom. On account of her work, she made a distant place of the world a tangible house that we might find out about. This class does unbelievable issues to broaden the worldview of a small part of the Midwest, and we have been all grateful to be part of it.

– Grace Merritt

Round 90 % of the Dagestani inhabitants adheres to Muslim religion. But, the values of this religion can sharply distinction a few of Dagestan’s cultural traditions, such because the act of tattooing. In an interview with KGOU, Alisa Ganieva, a well-known author from Dagestan, discusses her ebook ‘Bride and Groom’ and its depiction of Dagestan.

Within the article, Ganieva explores the combination of influences current in Dagestan and says that, regardless of Dagestan being primarily Muslim nation, ladies carrying hijabs was, “solely lately launched to the world.” Ganeiva notes, “Ladies in Dagestan are accustomed to be the heads of their household and lots of older ladies smoke and have tattoos.”

Dagestan is an space of maximum religion juxtaposed with Dagestan’s personal steeped historical past and traditions. This distinction is probably greatest understood by feminine tattooing. In keeping with Khabib Ismaliov, an ethnographer, the act of feminine tattooing swept by Dagestan lengthy earlier than the Muslim faith.

These tattoos carry that means. Ismaliov gives the example of tattooed dots, saying: “If an single woman places a dot on every finger that will imply: ‘I’m a wealthy woman, poor males—keep away” Certainly, Dagestani tattoos carry that means which might inform others in regards to the wearer’s standing or intentions.

Chenciner et al, in Tattooed Ladies of Dagestan says “Tattooed mountain ladies of typically nice age, modesty allowing, took pleasure in displaying their tattoos. They revealed a kind of mysterious delight, blended with insolence and an elusive slyness. In different phrases, that they had an angle.”

Within the areas practising conventional tattoos in Dagestan, whereas each women and boys will be tattooed throughout childhood, solely ladies will be tattooed into maturity.

The origins of those tattoos are diversified: some are chosen by elders or different occasions it’s chosen by the wearer. Moreover, the situation of those tattoos diversified.

In Chenciner et al., they are saying “If she [the tattooed woman] had a good looking face, the tattoo was on her face. If she had artistic, grasp’s palms, the tattoo was on her palms. If she had enticing legs or extraordinary breasts… she was tattooed on her legs or her breasts.” Moreover, the tattoo itself might have that means, comparable to a chook on the legs that means “as mild as a chook”

These tattoos are laden with that means, and that they will empower the ladies carrying the tattoos.

This wealthy custom displays Dagestan’s storied historical past and its reference to nature. But, this historic follow and the historical past it represents reside concurrently with Dagestan’s spiritual inhabitants, consisting primarily of Muslims and Christians. Each Islam and Christianity hyperlink tattoos with concepts of “dirtiness.” As author Alisa Ganieva famous, Dagestan is a “hodgepodge of various traditions.”

That is maybe most clearly understood by the intricate interactions between faith and long-lived cultural practices comparable to tattooing. In Dagestan, tattooing has served as a chance for girls to regain the autonomy of their very own our bodies by selecting what goes on them. But, it may also be a approach to reaffirm the lady’s standing.

Not solely is the cultural historical past of tattooing layered in its personal battle of subjugation versus empowerment, however additional difficult by the comparatively current inflow of religions comparable to Islam and Christianity. This relationship creates the cultural “hodgepodge” which provides to the cultural range inside Dagestan.

– Mack Cross