Slavic Languages and Literature

www.lang.uiuc.edu/slavic/home.html

(Including Bulgarian, Czech, Old Church Slavonic, Polish, Russian, Serbian or Croatian, and Ukrainian)

Head of the Department: Richard V. Tempest
Correspondence and Admission Information: Connie Coleman, 3092 Foreign Languages Building,
707 South Mathews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801
(217) 333-0680
E-mail: slavic@uiuc.edu

Graduate Degree Programs

The Department of Slavic Languages and Literature offers graduate work leading to the degrees of Master of Arts in Slavic Languages and Literature and doctor of philosophy with specialization in Russian literature or Slavic linguistics.

Admission

Prospective graduate students of Slavic languages and literatures should have had the equivalent of at least three years of college Russian and some advanced coursework in Russian literature. Some acquaintance with other languages and literatures is desirable. Students choosing Russian or other Slavic languages and literatures as a minor subject should consult the department. Graduate Record Examination (GRE) scores are required for all students, and Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) scores are required for international students. Applications to enter in the spring semester will be considered. Graduate College admission requirements apply.

Graduate Teaching Experience

Although teaching is not a general Graduate College requirement, experience in teaching is considered an important part of the graduate experience in this program.

Master of Arts

In addition to fulfilling the requirements of the Graduate College, candidates must pass both a written and an oral examination and must pass a Russian proficiency examination. All students must complete 32 graduate hours of advanced courses including at least 8 in literature and 8 in linguistics. No master’s thesis is required.

Doctor of Philosophy

All candidates for the Ph.D. degree must fulfill the general requirements of the Graduate College and must have a reading knowledge of two non-Slavic languages, ordinarily French and German. A student entering the program with a master of arts degree from another department or university must pass a qualifying examination by the end of the second semester of full-time study in the department. A student may choose literature or linguistics as a major field. In addition to satisfying departmental language proficiency requirements, students must complete 32 graduate hours of coursework beyond the master of arts degree, of which at least 20 are within the student’s major field of study. The student must also complete a minor consisting of three graduate-level courses in a single field, or two such courses each in two fields. Possible minor fields include Russian literature, Slavic linguistics, another Slavic language or literature, or an acceptable subject area outside the department. A student with a double minor may elect to be examined in only one minor. Students majoring in Russian literature must complete two graduate-level courses in another modern Slavic language or literature in the original language. Students majoring in Slavic linguistics must complete a minimum of three graduate-level courses in two other modern Slavic languages or literatures in the original languages. A Ph.D. preliminary examination, consisting of written and oral portions on both major and minor fields, is required. A thesis is required for the degree of doctor of philosophy.

Research Interests

Graduate courses are offered in Bulgarian, Czech, Polish, Russian, Serbian or Croatian, and Ukrainian languages and literatures, and in Old Church Slavonic. Areas of special interest in linguistics include East, West, and South Slavic linguistics; language teaching pedagogy; and computer-assisted language teaching. In literature, the special fields include Russian literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Russian literature and society, the Russian romantic and symbolist poets, Russo-Western literary and cultural contacts, and Russo-Jewish literary relations. Other areas of special interest include the Soviet, Russian, and East European cinema, literary translation, and Polish literature.

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has one of the country’s three outstanding Slavic library collections. The Illinois Summer Research Laboratory on Russia and Eastern Europe brings to the campus more than one hundred postdoctoral researchers from all over the country every year to take advantage of the Slavic library resources. The library’s unique Slavic reference service is in year-round operation, answering queries from libraries and individual scholars throughout the country.

Financial Aid

Several forms of financial assistance, including University fellowships, Foreign Language and Area Studies (Title VI) Fellowships, teaching assistantships, and research assistantships are available. There are also opportunities for part-time related work in the Slavic and East European Division of the University Library and elsewhere on the campus. Most students making satisfactory progress are assured of some form of financial assistance and also receive the opportunity to acquire classroom teaching experience.