On the website of the Higher School of Economics, the course “Introduction to Gender Studies” of the Faculty of Social Sciences, designed for the 2023-2024 academic year, was renamed “Introduction to Women’s and Men’s Studies”, the publication “Paper” drew attention to this.
In the annotation to the course, the words “gender” and “gender-related” were retained. The HSE website states that the program should introduce students to tools for measuring gender inequality in states, as well as the main modern gender approaches — postmodernism, transnationalism, intersectionality and queer theory.
What exactly is the reason for the renaming of the course? unknown.
At the beginning of September, HSE first-year students told student magazine DOXA that classes in philosophy and history were replaced by a propaganda course “Fundamentals of Russian Statehood.”
In March, Proekt reported that the HSE Directorate for Legal Affairs sent out a memo to departments of the university, in which employees were obliged to remove from the library any literature with “LGBT propaganda.” In particular, the educational institution included books mentioning such “taboo practices” as BDSM and swinging. In addition, the compilers of the memo asked to remove “information materials of foreign agents” from the electronic catalog of the university library.
At the same time, Novaya Gazeta Europe familiarized itself with the contents of the HSE book depository and found in it several hundred books and articles in which, According to the memo’s definition, there is “LGBT propaganda.” Among them are the book “Introduction to Queer Theory” by Annamarie Jagoz and “Introduction to Sexology” by Igor Kon.
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