Learned in Translation: Vivian Susko
Vivian Susko's research experience during the summer of 2018 took the form of an immersive journalism project.
An Immersive Journalism Project in Banská Štiavnica, Slovakia. Vivian Susko's research experience during the summer of 2018 took the form of an immersive journalism project.
By Vivian Susko
My research during the summer of 2018 took the form of an immersive journalism project in Banská Štiavnica, Slovakia. I interviewed nearly twenty people, spanning across varying generations and professions. The questions were tailored to the specific age range and career of each interviewee, but all encounters gathered information regarding the communist regime in Slovakia and the current Government corruption still occurring today.
While I was not conducting interviews, I spent each morning as a teaching assistant in the Nezabudka Kindergarten. Using my experience with observation hours in Canton High schools through the St. Lawrence education minor, I wrote many articles describing the educational systems in Slovakia. This research corresponded with my data regarding communism, as I interviewed many former teachers and students about the continuous changes in Slovak education as politics have shifted.
The final product of this project will take the form of an interactive web page. It will include a profile of each person that I interviewed, as well as a timeline with each place that I visited. The site will also include several articles discussing personal experiences, comparing American educational systems with those in Slovakia, and debating political corruption. For example, one article concerns the death of Jan Kuciak, a journalist murdered this past February in Slovakia just after having released an article exposing government corruption. It is my hope for this project to spark both interest and debate in an American University regarding a smaller corner of the world, a place many people may never otherwise have considered. In order to better our own political and social standing, we must first become aware of and learn from a different perspective. This project exposes both the pros and cons of a communist system, utilizing the words of people who have experienced it first-hand and are still dealing with the aftermath today.
