Author: Maggi Palacios

December 15, 2019

The Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Washington invites applications to its M.A. and Ph.D. programs in Literature or in Slavic Linguistics, for entry in Autumn 2020.

Our department teaches a rich variety of Slavic languages, including Russian, Polish, Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian, Slovene, Ukrainian, and occasionally Bulgarian, Czech, and Romanian. A selective list of our faculty’s concentrations includes Russian, Czech, and former and post-Yugoslav literature and film; comparative literature; post-Soviet, Russian-Jewish, and general cultural studies (including studies in visual arts, gender, ethnicity, and nationalism; animal and environmental studies; disability studies; as well as death studies); and diachronic and synchronic linguistics (including syntax, semantics and pragmatics in a cross-cultural perspective).

We invite you to consult https://slavic.washington.edu/people/faculty for a list of our faculty and their research interests. We also pride ourselves on our close ties with the Ellison Center for Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies, as well as with other departments and programs, such as Comparative Literature, Linguistics, History, Political Science, Jewish Studies, Cinema and Media Studies, Disability Studies, Anthropology, Near Eastern Literatures and Cultures, Scandinavian Studies, Comparative History of Ideas, and the Simpson Center for the Humanities.  These relationships enhance our ability to carry out research and teaching missions in the broad area of Slavic, Eurasian, post-Soviet and Post-Socialist Studies, and provide our graduate students with an in-depth, comprehensive education in their chosen area of study. 

Deadline: February 15, 2020

The UIC Department of Polish, Russian, and Lithuanian Studies (https://prls.uic.edu/) invites interested students to apply for the MA and PhD programs in Polish and Russian Literatures and Cultures at the University of Illinois at Chicago.  For detailed information about our graduate program and application deadlines and instructions, please click this link or see the information below: https://prls.uic.edu/academics/ma-and-phd/grad-invitation/.  We would be very grateful if you could send the link or forward this email to all interested students.

We welcome you to join our thriving department in one of the US’s most livable and affordable cultural centers. In recent years, the department has placed all of its graduating PhD students in full-time academic positions at both research universities and liberal arts colleges in North America. UIC’s record for graduate student success in the fields of Polish, Russian, and Polish-Jewish studies is rooted in the department’s attentive advising and supportive scholarly community.

The PRLS Department at UIC offers graduate students a vibrant intellectual environment where they can pursue innovative and interdisciplinary approaches to scholarship. Department faculty specialize in:
•       20th and 21st Century Polish and Russian Literatures
•       Verbal and Visual Avant-gardes
•       Literary Theory
•       Polish Jewish Culture, and Comparative Polish and Yiddish Modernisms
•       Film & Media
•       Diaspora, Transnationalism and Multilinguality
•       Sound Studies

All courses at UIC approach literature and the arts as spaces of encounter, and thus highlight the productive interaction of diverse cultural and linguistic traditions that characterize Polish, Russian, Lithuanian, and Jewish history. Recent graduate courses have included:
•       Addiction and Modernity
•       Decline of Art: Polish Avant-garde and the Crisis of European Culture
•       Disobedient Practices: Literature as Resistance to Stalinism
•       Gombrowicz: Exile and Exposition
•       Imperial Formations: Topics in New Imperial History
•       Nabokov and the Nabokovian
•       Perversion and Bureaucracy: Modern Intellectual History of Central Europe
•       Polish Jewish Territories in the Literary Imagination
•       Russia and the West
•       Schulz: Messianism, Masochism, and Melancholy
•       The Russian Avant-Garde
•       Translation, Transmission, and Translinguality
•       The Truth of the Matter: Artists and the Actual in Russian Literature and Cinema
•       Theory and Practice of Parody
•       Writing in the Third Language: Between Theology and Materialism in Central & East European Prose

The department is deeply engaged with intellectual life at UIC, and graduate students frequently pursue courses in UIC’s renowned departments of English and Art History. Our students especially benefit from close collaboration with our colleagues in the Department of History, where four professors specialize in the history and thought of Russia and Poland. Furthermore, every year a visiting scholar from Poland (funded by the Fulbright Visiting Scholar Program) and a visiting scholar from Russia (funded by the Prokhorov Fund) offer seminars and contribute to the intellectual life of the department.

Students earning a graduate degree in Russian or Polish literatures may complement their courses by enrolling in an Interdepartmental Graduate Concentration in Gender and Women’s Studies, Central and Eastern European Studies, or Violence Studies. In addition to developing expertise in research, students learn and practice cutting edge teaching techniques at
the Language and Culture Learning Center.

The majority of our graduate students are awarded teaching assistantships that come with a stipend and full tuition waiver for the duration of their program. They further benefit from the support of UIC’s strong Graduate Employees Union.

Financial resources made available by the creation of the Stefan & Lucy Hejna Fund in Polish Language and Literature at UIC create opportunities for vibrant and ongoing exchange with prominent scholars in the fields of Polish Studies, Polish Jewish Studies and Central and East European Studies, through the organization at UIC of annual international conferences, and of events highlighting developments in contemporary Polish culture and scholarship. The UIC Fund for Polish Jewish Studies provides support for conference participation as well as merit-based awards.

For students interested in Russian studies, our annual Workshop in Russian Modernism brings together leading scholars in the field to discuss salient topics related to modernity and postmodernity. In addition to supporting a visiting scholar, our partnership with the Prokhorov Fund allows us to bring a creative personality from Russia each year and send two graduate students to take part in a summer seminar at the Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg. In 2018, Maxim Didenko, an award-winning Russian theater director, spent a week at UIC, where he conducted a two-day master class for our students, visited classes, and answered questions after the screening of his critically acclaimed play, Earth. The department also hosts numerous lectures and performances by writers, poets, filmmakers and musicians; our recent guests included Kirill Medvedev, Anna Moiseenko, Roman Osminkin, Maria Stepanova, Tatyana Tolstaya, and Yuri Andrukhovych.

To be considered for university fellowships, the early deadline is December 15, 2019. To be considered for teaching assistantships or tuition wavers, complete applications must be received by February 15, 2020. Detailed application instructions can be found on the admissions website.   Further information about our graduate programs can be found on our website.  Please direct your inquiries about the graduate program and application process to Director of Graduate Studies Julia Vaingurt at vaingurt@uic.edu.

Deadline: January 15, 2020

The Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Virginia welcomes applications for three graduate programs, the MA in Contemporary Russian Studies, the MA in Slavic Languages and Literatures, and the PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures.

The MA in Contemporary Russian Studies offers courses in Russian literature, language, culture, history, politics, art history, religious studies, and sociology, as well as further study in advanced Russian language.

The MA and PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures train graduate students primarily in Russian literature, culture, and advance language skills toward professional-level proficiency. At the PhD level students take secondary offerings in Polish language and Polish and Central European literature and film. Students may also take courses in related areas in other language departments, English, History, and Religious Studies, among many others.

Among the distinctive aspects of UVA’s graduate programs in Slavic is rigorous training to a high level of proficiency in Russian language. Students have Oral Proficiency Interviews at each level of study. Students may attend regular Russian teas, take a role in the Russian play, participate in meals and events at the 24/7 Russian-language Russian House, and a host of other events. The University has ample funds for graduate students to organize events related to Slavic cultures and to support foreign-language study and dissertation research abroad.

Other strengths of the UVA Slavic program include the opportunity to work with distinguished faculty. Areas of faculty expertise include museum studies, prison-camp literature and gulag studies, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Nabokov, intellectual history, Russian philosophy and religion, digital humanities, and literary cartography. Students enjoy an effective faculty-student mentorship program and an excellent library collection with highly responsive acquisition services.

UVA’s Slavic graduate students form an active community. They run a speaker series, host professionalization workshops, organize an annual conference, publish a newsletter, and enjoy convivial social gatherings. 

UVA offers generous five-year funding packages for PhD students. The Department occasionally has partial funding and work opportunities for MA students. Depending on their language proficiency, UVA PhD students typically gain experience teaching language at various levels, as well as assisting in teaching undergraduate literature and folklore courses. Other opportunities for support are available through related departments and programs.

The deadline for on-line applications is January 15, 2020.

For information about Slavic programs and the application process, please visit the Slavic Department website at: http://artsandsciences.virginia.edu/slavic/, or contact Director of Graduate Studies Edith W. Clowes at: clowes@virginia.edu or eec3c@virginia.edu.