Slavic Languages and Literatures PhD

Slavic languages and literature at the University of WisconsinMadison is a national leader of doctoral programs in the field, and welcomes students with a B.A./B.S. or M.A. who are interested in all areas of Russian and comparative Slavic prose, poetry, drama, and philosophy. The curriculum offers breadth and depth in a variety of areas of Slavic philology, literature, and culture, and is known for offering a balanced approach to training in teaching, writing, and research.

The program is fortunate to count among its faculty, specialists in Czech, Polish, Russian, and Serbo-Croatian languages, literature, and culture, award-winning authors and teachers, and members of editorial boards of leading journals and publication series. Information regarding faculty biographical sketches are available on the program website. In addition to their excellence in teaching and research, professors are unparalleled mentors to graduate students. Students work closely with faculty members on writing, teaching, and publishing. Graduate students are expected to produce publishable articles during their graduate careers, and are provided the guidance and feedback to do so.

The department places high expectations on graduate students to achieve and maintain professional-level proficiency in the Russian language in all four modalities: speaking, writing, listening, and reading. All students who are not native speakers of Russian will be tested in those modalitiesplus Russian grammarwhen they enter the program, and periodically throughout their tenure. Appropriate competency must be demonstrated before receiving a teaching assistantship and before passing from M.A. to Ph.D. candidacy.

Graduate students in the program receive exceptional training in teaching both language and literature. The department has a thriving undergraduate program in Slavic languages with strong enrollments in language, literature and culture, providing many opportunities for teaching experience, working closely with master teachers among the faculty and academic staff. In addition to teaching assignments in first- through fourth-semester Russian language (and occasionally in other Slavic languages), as well as in the two-semester undergraduate survey of Russian literature course, the department has also instituted an apprenticeship program for adequately prepared graduate students in the teaching of advanced literature and language classes. The program's graduate teaching assistants regularly win prestigious campus awards for their excellence in the classroom.

The Ph.D. program typically requires three years of coursework, including an introduction to literary theory and a methods course in the teaching of Slavic languages, as well as linguistics courses and the full range of Russian literary and cultural history. An M.A. is conferred after three or four semesters, when all master's requirements are fulfilled. Students accepted to the Ph.D. program with an M.A. in Russian literature earned at another institution may choose to fulfill masters requirements through the passing of a special qualifying examination. All Ph.D. students are also expected to choose a secondary area (minor) in addition to the major in Russian literature. Many choose to minor in a non-Russian Slavic language and literature (Polish or Serbo-Croatian). Other popular minors include English, history, communication arts, second language acquisition, comparative literature, linguistics, philosophy, folklore, and religious studies. The department also requires evidence of reading knowledge of a non-Russian Slavic language (Czech, Polish, or Serbo-Croatian) as well as of French or German before attaining dissertator status. More information regarding coursework may be found on the program website.

Students complete all requirements for dissertator status by the end of their seventh semester. The graduate program was recently revised, including the dissertation process, to allow for graduation with the Ph.D. in six to seven years from the B.A. Students who choose to take a leave of absence for language study may require a longer tenure.

1. (Critical Thinking and Writing Skills) Demonstrate: analytic, interpretative, and critical thinking skills; knowledge of research protocols; and understanding of the specificity of the literary object as well as its historical and cultural context.
2. (Literature) Develop comprehensive knowledge of Russian literary history, the major writers and movements, from the origins to the present day. Demonstrate this knowledge in relation to the following periods and movements: Old Russian Literature; 18th-Century Russian Literature; Romanticism (ca. 1790s to 1840s); Realism (ca. 1840s to 1890s); Modernism (ca. 1890s to 1920s); Soviet, Emigre, and Post-Soviet Periods (ca. 1930s to the present).
3. (Language proficiency) Demonstrate Advanced Russian language proficiency on the ACTFL (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) scale across all modalities (speaking, listening, reading, writing). Demonstrate advanced knowledge of the structure of contemporary Russian. Develop, at minimum, reading proficiency in languages essential for research in the field, including a second Slavic language and either French or German.
4. (Ph.D. Minor) Demonstrate intellectual breadth and the ability to synthesize cross-cultural and interdisciplinary perspectives through the completion of a doctoral minor.
5. (Ph.D. Dissertation) A successful Ph.D. candidate will have written a dissertation that synthesizes knowledge of relevant disciplines and develops it to create an original contribution to scholarship. The candidate will be able to present the results of her or his research both to experts in the field as well as to a wider public.
6. (Teacher-Trainer) Demonstrate, both in theory and through instructional practice, foundational knowledge of second-language teaching, including the concepts of proficiency-oriented instruction and communicative language teaching; principles behind the design, integration, and delivery of classroom instruction and appropriate assessment instruments for all four modalities (speaking, listening, reading, writing), structure, and culture.
7. Recognize, apply, and foster principles of ethical and professional conduct in the context of Slavic studies.

A bachelor’s degree from a regionally accredited U.S. institution or a comparable degree from an international institution is required. International applicants must have a degree comparable to a regionally accredited U.S. bachelor’s degree. You must have completed your undergraduate degree, or similar, before starting graduate school.

A minimum undergraduate grade-point average (GPA) of 3.00 on the equivalent of the last 60 semester hours (approximately two years of work) or a master’s degree with a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.00 is required. Applicants from an international institution must demonstrate strong academic achievement comparable to a 3.00 for an undergraduate or master’s degree. The Graduate School will use your institution’s grading scale. Do not convert your grades to a 4.00 scale.

Every applicant whose native language is not English, or whose undergraduate instruction was not in English, must provide an English proficiency test score. TOEFL scores must be submitted electronically via ETS. IELTS scores can be submitted electronically or by paper.  Our office address is: UW-Madison Graduate School, Office of Admissions, 232 Bascom Hall, 500 Lincoln Drive, Madison, WI 53706.  Your score will not be accepted if it is more than two years old from the start of your admission term. Country of citizenship does not exempt applicants from this requirement. Language of instruction at the college or university level and how recent the language instruction was taken are the determining factors in meeting this requirement.

Applicants are exempt if: