The Department of Slavic Languages at the University of Wisconsin-Madison offers instruction over a broad range of languages, literatures and cultures from the Slavic world. The Department began as a Department of Polish in 1936 and assumed its present name in 1942. For a more detailed look at the history of the department, please click here.
Among the languages taught regularly in our department are Czech, Polish, Russian, and Serbian/Croatian. Other languages (e.g., Bulgarian) may be taught on an occasional basis.
Our faculty is diverse in its interests and approaches and accessible and "user-friendly" in its interpersonal dealings. Undergraduates can major either in Polish or in Russian, with the latter having two tracks: Russian Language and Literature (emphasis on language, literature, and culture) and Russian Language and Civilization (emphasis on language and area studies). Most students entering the graduate program pursue the Ph.D. with an eye to becoming academics, although in recent years we have had several graduates who have successfully used their Slavic background in combination with other fields (e.g., information technology) to find employment. Virtually all of our continuing graduate students teach in the department at some point, and we are justifiably proud of our teacher training program and the number of teaching awards that our students routinely receive. A number of our undergraduate students have won prizes for their performances in national competitions; others have gone on to have successful careers at the local, national, and international levels. Likewise, we are especially proud of the placement record of our finishing Doctoral students, many of whom are now in permanent posts at prominent colleges and universities across the country. In short, we welcome you to our website and encourage you to explore it and, even better, to come see us in our classrooms and in our department corridors on the fourteenth floor of Van Hise Hall.