About Us
The Department of Slavic Languages at Brown provides instruction in the cultures and literatures of Russia, the Czech Republic, and other Slavic countries. One of the oldest Slavic departments in the U.S. (established in 1947 with a graduate program added in 1960), the department has been distinguished by academic excellence and dedication to teaching since its inception. Throughout its existence its ranks have included internationally renowned Slavists, among them Henry Kucera, Sam Driver, Victor Terras, Thomas Winner, Donald Fanger, and Richard Gustafson.
The department has become the center for campus study of the Slavic world. Nationally, its openness to innovative approaches in the field has kept it in the vanguard of Slavic studies. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, all Slavic nations faced tremendous challenges, and the changes that resulted meant that Slavists worldwide have had to reevaluate many aspects of their professional development, research and instruction. The Department of Slavic Languages has sought to play a leading role in this process; in response to disciplinary change, the department reorganized around existing strengths and ventured into new areas of scholarship and teaching. The department now focuses on Russian and Czech languages, literatures and cultures, and presents the Slavic world as consisting of a number of diverse cultures and traditions rather than as a monolithic whole. Of particular interest to the department are the roles language and literature have played in the political and social development of the former Eastern-Bloc nations.
Program Objectives
Most Slavic departments approach Russian and other Slavic literatures and cultures largely from a mono-disciplinary perspective, and some do not extend to undergraduates the opportunity graduate students have to make a language other than Russian the basis of their research. The department sees the new context of Slavic studies at Brown as strategically linked to a number of fields across the humanities and social sciences. In that connection, the department created a new concentration in Slavic studies. The concentration is in line with developments within the discipline and offers undergraduates superb opportunities to conduct research in a variety of areas effectively linking the study of language, culture, literature, performing arts, history, economics, and international relations. As a result, the program brings together and focuses the various types of expertise on Eastern Europe that exist at Brown in a single academic unit. The department achieved this by creating joint appointments, formalizing already existing ties with the departments of history, comparative literature, theater, and political science as well as the Watson Institute for International Studies. The mission is to educate researchers and teachers in the field of Slavic studies in the context of this cross-fertilization among disciplines. The department considers essential that all its students be ready to continue educating themselves after they receive their respective degrees at Brown.
Both undergraduate and graduate programs in Slavic studies build on the spirit of a collaborative exchange of ideas through the open curriculum, one of Brown’s unique strengths. The program’s vigor derives from the department’s faculty, who regularly win awards from professional associations, including the national award for excellence in teaching at the post-secondary level by the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages (AATSEEL) and “Outstanding Academic Title” from Choice. Collectively, the department has also won numerous grants and internal and external fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, International Research and Exchanges Board, American Council of Learned Societies, Wriston Curricular Development Grants Program, a consortium grant from the Consortium for Language Teaching and Learning, among many others.
Since much of the exciting research in Slavic studies takes place at the borderlines between disciplines, the department developed ways of connecting scholars working in literatures to their colleagues whose research focuses on history, economics, and political science. Toward this end, the department generated several new courses including Prague and St. Petersburg; the capstone course, Vaclav Havel: Dissident, Playwright, and Politician (which lets students study drama, literature, history, and politics of the former Czechoslovakia); and a team-taught interdisciplinary course, Russian Culture: From Peter the Great to Putin, which engages history, religion, art, literature, music, and film.
In terms of research and faculty development, the department’s current strengths include Russian literature (early period to twentieth century), Russian culture, Russian theater, Russian history and politics of Russia and Eastern Europe, Czech language, literature, and culture, Slavic discourse analysis and cognitive linguistics, and language acquisition and pedagogy.
Undergraduate Concentration and Programs in Slavic Studies
Slavic studies at Brown is one of the few unique undergraduate programs nationwide that responds to students’ individual academic interests and attends to their future professional goals. Each student can collaborate closely with faculty from different disciplines and combine fields such as international relations, history, political science, art and architecture, music, linguistics, and literature. The department faculty are committed to providing highly individualized interaction with students in research. It enables a variety of regional and interdisciplinary studies related to the Slavic world. Students can study in the Brown-in-Prague program, the summer Brown-in-St. Petersburg (starting 2006), and other approved programs. Throughout the year, students attend special lectures, Russian tea and Czech coffee hours, and perform in plays and poetry readings in Slavic festivals.
The department’s graduates are actively involved in internships in the U.S. and abroad, and many are recipients of competitive Brown fellowships and prestigious external grants and scholarships (e.g. Brown Arnold Fellowship, Royce Fellowship, Masaryk University
scholarships, Fulbright Fellowships). Students who study Slavic literatures are accepted into excellent graduate programs at Princeton, Stanford, and Cambridge. The interdisciplinary nature of the Slavic studies program enable students to go on to not only competitive graduate programs in Slavic related fields, but also to filmmaking, law, diplomacy, education, and medicine.
The department’s courses serve as liberal arts learning courses for a wide variety of students in other disciplines. Slavic languages are studied by students with an array of academic interests: comparative literature, political science, history, international relations, engineering, and natural sciences. The Russian and Czech language programs also help students fulfill the three-year language requirement for concentrators in international relations. The Department of Slavic Languages offers standard and honors programs in Slavic studies, both built on sound knowledge of one or two Slavic languages, and deep, nuanced, and culturally understandings of the East European civilizations.
Graduate Study in Slavic Languages at Brown: Present and Future
The Department of Slavic Languages aims to educate new generations of scholars dedicated to advancing the field of Slavic studies. It seeks to provide a thorough grounding in the Slavic literary and cultural traditions and a solid training in research.
For nearly forty five years, the Department of Slavic Languages at Brown has been successful in producing distinguished scholars and teachers and having an excellent placement record for its Ph.D. recipients. In the past five years, twelve of the department’s graduate students completed their doctoral degrees and secured positions in excellent academic institutions. Until recently, the department had two programs leading to the doctoral degree, one in Russian language and literature with Slavic linguistics as a minor field, the other in Slavic linguistics with a Slavic literature as a minor field. Traditionally, therefore, the department’s main strength has been Russian literature, philology, and Slavic linguistics, with the main language of specialization Russian and/or Czech.
Currently, the Department of Slavic Languages is in the process of reorganizing its graduate program into a new interdisciplinary Ph.D. program that would meet the needs of a new generation of students and respond to the changes in the field. This new graduate program in Slavic studies will produce students with deep and rigorous expertise in a specialized area of a Slavic literature and culture. The program will give students a thorough knowledge of the evolving literary canon and historical context as well as the necessary training in research essential to the development of their area of expertise in an inter-regional (European, cross-Slavic, Eurasian) or interdisciplinary context (history, theater, film, art history). The program will offer excellent opportunities to work closely with outstanding faculty members and collaborate on specific research projects both inside and outside the department. In addition, the program will provide a cohesive mechanism for preparing versatile specialists who are trained in interdisciplinary approaches to Slavic studies and who, increasingly, must be qualified to fill joint appointments with other departments such as comparative literature, history, theater, art history, modern culture and media, and Judaic studies. A truly interdisciplinary program should go beyond merely requiring a minor field of specialization, but instead involve required course work in the area. Finally, the department expects its graduate students to gain teaching experience not only in language, culture, and literature, but also in other disciplines to give them the edge necessary to compete for joint and cross disciplinary appointments.