Partnership Between Iowa State University’s Women’s Studies Program and Center for Gender Studies at Karazin Kharkiv National University

Project Description

This project addresses the need in Ukraine, and more broadly in the post-socialist countries, for development and dissemination of knowledge about the relationship of gender to the emerging democracies and market economies. The two programs are working collaboratively, drawing on each other’s strengths. The Karazin Kharkiv Center for Gender Studies aims to develop an effective curriculum and to expose its faculty to more active teaching methods. The Women’s Studies Program at ISU is helping the Center in these endeavors as it has a well developed academic program and faculty who are experts in curricular development and innovative teaching. In turn, the Center is aiding the Program with internationalization by working with women’s studies faculty to infuse more content on the post-socialist countries, and especially Ukraine, into their courses. Teams of project participants from both institutions are working on curricular modules on a variety of topics. These modules, or short units of instruction, can be inserted into existing courses or several modules can be integrated into a new course.

The Women’s Studies Program faculty also have the opportunity to teach in the Center’s Summer Institute in Foros, Crimea, and to engage in collaborative research projects with their counterparts in Ukraine. Both units are working together to develop distance education programs and to disseminate the developed curricular modules online. It is expected that through exchanges and collaborative work between the two institutions, a long-term partnership will be forged.