AUCA Professor Dagold Holds Writing and Pedagogy Workshops at Osh Humanities Pedagogical Institute

November 20, 2016

The collaboration between the American University of Central Asia (AUCA) and the Osh Humanities Pedagogical Institute (OGPI) began almost five years ago and was continued this past week. AUCA's Raphael Dagold, an assistant professor of creative writing in AUCA's general education program, traveled to Osh to hold an English creative writing workshop with students from OGPI. Dagold was accompanied by AUCA’s PR Director Dinara Orozbaeva and Coordinator of Academic Advising Barbara Verocht. The group also talked with the administration of OGPI about institutionalizing pedagogical collaboration between AUCA and OGPI.

During his visit, Professor Dagold held a training session for faculty members of the OGPI Department of Foreign Languages. The second day, Verchot and Dagold met with Foreign Languages students, who had organized a conference “Creative work of writers of foreign countries.” Dagold, Verocht, and Orozbaeva were welcomed by OGPI Rector Bekmyrza Zuluev, Associate Professor K.T.Raimbekov, OGPI Pro-rector on Studies, and Associate Professor A.U.Babekov, Pro-rector on Science and Foreign contacts.

OGPI Rector Bekmyrza Zuluev was pleased with the trip and excited for the potential of future collaboration. “We are happy to continue our collaboration with AUCA, because our partnership can and should be expanded. There are ideas and offers to develop our partnership not only in pedagogy, but in science as well. I can see us holding academic conferences and preparing joint publications in the future.”

Verchot was also happy with the success of the trip, “Our visit to OGPI was highly rewarding and, I hope, a catalyst for increasing or formalizing an already established cooperation between American University of Central Asia (AUCA) and the institute. Our escort and OGPI instructor, Mars Parviev, and I discussed possibilities of mutual exchange including OGPI students visiting AUCA on a regular basis throughout the academic year and AUCA faculty visiting OGPI to teach students and faculty on a regular basis. Rector Bekmurza Zuluev was both enthusiastic and appreciative of these ideas. I look forward to visiting Osh and OGPI again soon. The city and university were so welcoming and enjoyable. Of course the plov and besbarmaq were amazingly delicious.”

Professor Dagold commented on his experience at OGPI, “as an American poet, and as an Assistant Professor at AUCA whose background is in creative writing and literature, I thought I could offer some ideas about American culture through poetry and about using creative writing to help teach English. For professors at the Institute, I provided a list of American poetry resources, and led a creative writing exercise with them that they could then perhaps use in their classes. “For the students, I lectured on ideas of inclusivity, exclusion, and individualism in America, as seen through poems by Walt Whitman, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, and Kathleen Graber. Then, using Walt Whitman’s poem “I Hear American Singing” as a sort of model, students wrote poems titled “I Hear Kyrgyzstan Singing” and recited their poems for everyone in the room. I was touched and humbled by the moving lyricism in the students’ work, and equally impressed with their willingness to stand up and share work they had just then written. I thoroughly enjoyed our visit to Osh, including of course seeing a Kyrgyz city that is very different from Bishkek, but it is certainly the students and faculty of OGPI who will remain most prominent in my memory. I feel very thankful to AUCA, the Institute, and to individuals—Dinara Orozbaeva at AUCA, Mars Parviev in Osh, the Pedagogical Institute president, Bekmyrza Zuluev, and others—who arranged the trip and made it such an enriching experience.”

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