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The graduate program in Slavic languages and literatures at Berkeley offers coherent and flexible training in Slavic literatures and cultures and in linguistics and philology. Students have the option of focusing on literature and culture (Russian and/or other Slavic) or on linguistics and philology. Interdisciplinary interests are encouraged and accommodated. The program is structured to progress from graduate courses and research seminars to supervised individual research as students gradually develop into practicing scholars who combine full competence in a discipline with an original theoretical or critical approach. With ten professors, seven emeriti professors actively involved in the program, a full staff of language instructors, and frequent visiting professors, the Department is able to offer courses and research expertise in almost any period, genre, and aspect of Russian, East European, and Eurasian literary, cultural, and linguistic study. Our aim is to combine comprehensive coverage of the field with opportunities for each student to pursue individual interests.

In literary studies, literature is viewed both as an autonomous object with its own intrinsic structure and aesthetic properties, and as part of a historical and cultural context. Accordingly, students are encouraged to combine textual analysis with contextual and to apply a variety of methods and theories, from traditional to contemporary.

In linguistics and philology, students are not only trained in standard approaches (from philological techniques through general linguistic theory), but are challenged to work toward a synthetic method that accounts for both the systemic and the contextual properties of Slavic, East European and Eurasian languages.

Literary scholarship, cultural history, literary/cultural theory, and linguistics are integrated in a number of courses and in the research interests of several faculty members.

As part of the Slavic tradition at Berkeley, instruction and research cover Slavic languages other than Russian--Polish, Czech, Serbian/Croatian and Bulgarian, and, in recent years, a number of Eurasian languages (that is, languages of the Caucasus and Central Asia). Students who select Russian as their major field frequently study another Slavic language and literature as a minor field of study; some select a minor in another academic field (for example, Film studies; Polish language and literature, Balkan studies; Eurasian studies; Russian and East European history; drama; folklore; translation; language pedagogy).

Berkeley welcomes students with interdisciplinary interests. The program encourages students who wish to focus on the diverse literary and cultural traditions that make up Russia, Eastern Europe, and Eurasia.

In addition to a required departmentally approved minor as described above, students have the option to participate in various University Certificate or Designated Emphasis programs, including the Certificate in Russian and East European Studies; the International and Area Studies Concurrent MA program; the Designated Emphasis Program on Women, Gender and Sexuality; Medieval Studies; and the Designated Emphasis on Film (see specific requirements of these programs).

Berkeley strives to prepare its students to function as teachers as well as scholars. Supervised language teaching instructorships are offered to all qualified graduate students, and unpaid internships in teaching literature and linguistic courses are available for academic credit. Students also have the opportunity to teach individually-designed courses in literature through the University Reading and Composition program. Slavic students have taught in departments of Comparative Literature and Linguistics and in Film Program. Practical language competence at a sophisticated level is developed through courses and extramurally funded opportunities to study and do research in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

Graduate students are actively involved in many extra-curricular professional activities, such as the Departmental colloquium devoted to faculty and graduate student research, the annual state-wide Slavic colloquium organized by students at UCB, UCLA, USC and Stanford, and major conferences held at Berkeley (there have been several international conferences on Russian and Slavic literature and culture in recent years).

Slavists at Berkeley, both faculty and graduate students, work in close association with the number of distinguished scholars in other national literatures and related disciplines. Berkeley is renowned for its programs in comparative literature, general linguistics, history (social, cultural, intellectual), anthropology and folklore, art history, music, sociology, and political science. All of these programs include specialists working with Russian and East European material. Two research units, the Institute for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (which houses the Berkeley Program in Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies and the Caucasus and Central Asia Program) and the Doreen Townsend Center for the Humanities, bring together interested faculty, students, and visiting scholars and organize and support a wide variety of activities of an interdisciplinary nature (working groups, discussions, seminars, lectures and lecture series, and conferences).

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