From Russia With Love, Art, and Fashion

My final project was a video to display the research and interviews that I conducted over the course of the semester. Early in the semester, I selected some preliminary themes to begin researching through my interviews such as education. Then, as my interviews progressed, I adjusted my focus and created new research questions. After the interview process was done, I began gather visual materials such as images, clips, and graphics to illustrate the story of my community partner or historical concepts that would be included in my project. Then, I created transcripts for my interviews. This step was definitely the most challenging, as there were some parts that I could not really understand. Sometimes, words were even more difficult to understand in the recording. However, this process was completed, and I was able to begin production on my final video!

Before this project, I was nervous about whether my language skills could navigate the diverse topics that could arise in conversation and respond thoughtfully in the moment. Still, I always have enjoyed creative challenges, and I was excited to put together a project that conveyed the findings of my research and captured the personality of my community partner Olesya.

Initially, I was concerned that I would not be able to conduct enough information, but I found that our conversations were so engaging, diverse, and spontaneous that the ultimate task was deciding what the focus of my project should be and narrowing my research from there.  I was able to conduct interviews with Olesya successfully, and we discussed a broad range of topics from the emphasis on math in the Soviet education system and Russian recipes to art and fashion.

Our conversations about fashion provided a particularly unique perspective through which to view immigration and life in the Soviet Union and Russia. As two people with extremely different life stories, fashion was something that both Olesya and I had in common. At one point, I wondered if the theme of fashion was too insignificant in the context of immigration and history. Then, I though, if fashion is a part of everyone’s life, how could it be too small? After attending Rada Landar’s lecture on Soviet Fashion, I decided that this theme was the perfect one to connect across and cultures and learn a lot about Olesya’s life in the Soviet Union as well as gain broader historical context.

The most surprising aspect of my work was learning how to interview well. What I had previously thought to be a simple question and answer turned out to be a deliberate process of constructing questions to gather relevant research information without steering the interviewee any particular way and remaining sensitive to their experiences. Learning how to properly interview helped me to overcome different challenges that presented themselves during the actual recording process. For example, if one question did not really elicit a good topic for conversation, I had many questions prepared in advance or questions phrased differently to help create a well-flowing conversation. Or, if I wanted to discuss a topic that included vocabulary that I was not yet familiar with, I created a list of common, relevant terms in advance.

My biggest takeaway from this project is flexibility! I came into this project with an idea of what I wanted the final product to look like and focus on. However, the actual interview and research process steered me in a whole new direction! I’m glad that I recognized this opportunity and allowed my project to unfold organically in a way that allowed for Olesya’s story to shine through.