Grad. Program: Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures (Indiana University)

Deadline: December 1, 2019 (international); January 15, 2019 (domestic)

The Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures at Indiana University invites applications to its MA and PhD programs.

With fifteen faculty in the core unit, the Indiana Slavic department is one of the largest in the country. We support PhD level work in Russian, Polish, and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BCS), as well as in Slavic linguistics and language pedagogy. Home to a Russian Flagship Program, we have seen recent growth in Russian enrollments and maintain programs in BCS, Czech, Polish, and Ukrainian.

Our core faculty offers mentorship in diverse areas including the theory and practice of translation, memory studies, economic criticism, cultural studies, and critical theory; research strengths in linguistics include pragmatics, phonology, second language acquisition, and pedagogy. Our extensive and engaged network of adjunct faculty adds expertise in fields such as documentary film, computational linguistics, and religious thought. Graduate students also have the opportunity for apprenticeships at our in-house press, Slavica, which puts out academic books in Slavic studies and, under the imprint Three String Books, literary translations.

Slavic at Indiana stands out for its collaborative opportunities with units like Central European and Eurasian Studies, the Russian and East European Institute, the Russian Studies Workshop, and the Theory Center at the College Arts and Humanities Institute. The constellation of scholars gathered around our Polish Studies Center, which includes researchers in literature, history, musicology, law, and anthropology among other fields, is unique in the country, as is the cluster of research faculty with expertise in the Balkans; we especially welcome applications in Polish and in BCS.

Linked programs offer a huge variety of area languages including Estonian, Yiddish, Hungarian, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Mongolian, and Uzbek, making Indiana an ideal place for regionally comparative work. Beyond the Bloomington campus, Indiana maintains exchanges with the Higher School of Economics, the University of Warsaw, and Jagiellonian University; our Europe Gateway in Berlin supports graduate workshops in collaboration with universities across Eastern Europe, and we facilitate international internships with institutions such as the Museum of the History of Polish Jews.

Competitive multi-year support packages might include fellowships, teaching language and culture courses, assistantships, and apprenticeships. Funding is also available from sources beyond the department, such as the Polish Studies Center. The range of funding types reflects the diversity of experiences that prepare our students for careers in academia and beyond.

The intellectual life of Indiana University, one of the so-called “Public Ivies,” is supported by a first-rate library, a top-tier cinema, the renowned Jacobs School of Music, and a vibrant array of reading groups, symposia, and visiting lectures, all on a gorgeous Chicago Gothic campus, built of local limestone and resembling a fever dream of John Ruskin. When the pleasures of the mind run cold, the glowing coals of the dynamic and walkable college town of Bloomington, an edgy oasis among the hills and hollows of Southern Indiana, afford inspirations of another order to restless minds and searching hearts.

For more information about our program, consult our website at http://slavic.indiana.edu/~iuslavic/. The deadline is January 15 for domestic and December 1 for international applicants.