CYS is writing a book!
The CYS team is working on the creation of a monograph based on the materials of projects supported by the Russian Science Foundation. The first step is a creative writing course from the HSE teachers, for vivid style and creative inspiration. We will tell you how the preparation is going and share our colleagues' impressions of the first stages of work.
The springly dance of a ballpoint pen on the pages of a notebook and the rhythmic echo of a laptop keyboard — in such an atmosphere, the staff of the Center for Youth Studies is preparing to write a new book.
CYS is working on the creation of a monograph «Youth in motion. Migration. Creativity. Resiliness» [«Молодёжь в движении. Миграция. Творчество. Устойчивость» – rus.]. The book will collect and present the results of projects carried out with the support of the Russian Science Foundation: "The choice of life strategies by talented youth and its role in increasing the competitiveness of Russian regions as a response to the global challenges of “brain drain" and "The sustainability and creative potential of youth in the North Caucasus region in the context of educational and labor migration".
The authors face a fascinating but difficult task — to tell about youth everyday life in the context of ethno-cultural spaces of regional cities of Russia using the richest material of quantitative and qualitative data. The book examines the youth of the conditional North and South, two seemingly different regions. However, researchers note that young people there have a lot in common in understanding their regional identity, the desire to self-actualize, and in the reasons and motives for mobility.
Before proceeding to the active phase of writing the text of the book, the CYS team approached the teachers of the “Creative writing” course at the Higher School of Economics with a proposal to conduct an intensive course with creative classes. The course of 8 online and offline seminars consisted of theory and a lot of practice. Each lesson, the students (as in “the writers of the book”) tried different stylistic tools, played with the bureaucratese and went beyond the usual academic style.
The director of the Center for Youth Studies, Elena Omelchenko, notes the important goal of teaching creative writing — the production of lively, vivid text.
director of the Centre for Youth Studies
We want the book not to be purely academically scientific, but to be written in a lively, publicistic-scientific language. We do not seek to abandon the depth of analysis, the fundamental concepts, and the striking research findings. We write in an engaging language in order to move to a new stage — to make sociology more accessible. To make our book interesting to read not only for scientists, undergraduates, and graduate students, but also, for example, for our informants, with whom we communicated, and residents of the cities in which we conducted research.
That's why we, being guided by high marks and positive feedback from the students, turned to these amazing teachers Nina Freiman and Boris Sudakov. We decided to work with our creativity, with our own literary style. It's easy to say, "We write vividly"! It requires skills that are acquired in the practice of writing, which become a familiar, everyday routine, like other professional skills.
Nina Freiman and Boris Sudakov's “Сreative writing” course has been celebrated for years by students of the Modern Social Analysis master's programme as the best in terms of usefulness and novelty of knowledge. Therefore, the staff of the Center had no doubts about their expertise.
Nina Freiman, teacher, author and artist, about working with CYS:
We tried to give the course participants stylistic tools that help them work not only with scientific, but also with scientific-journalistic texts. The studying group was wonderful. It feels like everyone has a lot of experience in the field and in the office, and they have their own very interesting developing works on various topics.
teacher
To dive into the study of the subtleties of journalism is useful not only to improve the skills of writing good texts. Co-education is also a curious experience for the colleagues of CYS. Evgenia Kuziner, a researcher at the Central Research Institute and one of the authors of the monograph, noted that the classes offered a new format for interacting with colleagues' texts:
researcher of the Centre for Youth Studies
It's also a big plus to work with colleagues, get inspired, and listen to what others write. During class, we read out our pieces of texts — this is also a very interesting experience, because we usually don't do that. Of course, we read something from each other, but most of the time it's ready-made texts.
After completing the training, colleagues continue to work on the book. We wish inspiration to the team and look forward to the release of the monograph!
