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.
