Slavic Graduate Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

[Lilya Kaganovsky]

The Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of 
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is one of the leading centers for Slavic 
studies in the United States. Currently the Department is undergoing a 
process of renewal and expansion. In the last two years we have 
welcomed three new full-time faculty members, Lilya Kaganovsky, Harriet 
Murav, and Valeria Sobol. Our undergraduate and graduate programs are 
being broadened to reflect the changing profile of the profession and 
the diversity of specializations among our faculty, whose research 
interests include literary history and interpretation, critical theory, 
Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn, Soviet film, Jewish studies, gender studies, 
Bulgarian literature, and Russian popular culture. For example, our new 
graduate course, "From Dandies to Men of Steel," introduces students to 
the study of gender, sexuality, and masculinity in Russian history and 
culture from 1830 to 1930, and is team-taught by faculty in history and 
literature. We are also one of the few departments in North America to 
teach a full range of Slavic languages: Ukrainian, Polish, Czech, 
Serbian and Croatian, and Bulgarian. The positive changes in the 
Department have been reflected in rising student enrollments in our 
language and literature courses. We encourage interdisciplinary work 
and intellectual collaboration and the Department maintains close ties 
with other campus units, including the Program in Comparative 
Literature, the Unit for Cinema Studies, the Unit for Critical Theory, 
the federally funded Russian and East European Center, and the 
University of Illinois library, the third largest university library in 
the United States. The Library's Slavic collection, which is also the 
third largest in the country, is a unique resource that attracts 
scholars from all over the world with its Summer Lab and other events. 
The Russian and East European Center provides generous financial 
support to our graduate students and assists them with travel to 
academic conferences. Over the past six years recipients of doctoral 
degrees from our department have obtained academic positions at Ohio 
State University, Emory University, DePauw University, the University 
of Alaska, the Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto, and the 
Defense Language Institute at Monterey. Fellowships and teaching 
assistantships are available to qualified students. The Department has 
a friendly atmosphere enhanced by the international character of the 
graduate student body. Professors and students regularly interact 
outside the classroom through reading circles and other academic and 
social forums. Recent and upcoming events include an international 
conference on Vasilii Rozanov and, in February 2004, a symposium on 
"(Russian) Cinema After Communism." As Head of the Department of Slavic 
Languages and Literatures at the University of Illinois at 
Urbana-Champaign, I invite you to write or e-mail me with any questions 
you might have about our program:  hlmurav at uiuc.edu; and to check out 
our website: http://slavic.lang.uiuc.edu/

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