Graduate

In response to the disruptions caused by the global pandemic, graduate programs in the Humanities and Social Sciences in the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh are pausing admissions for fall 2021. This one-year intermission will enable us to devote our resources and attention to our continuing students. Graduate training and research are central to the mission of the Dietrich School and the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures.  While we do not pause admissions lightly, in these uncertain times we are committed to optimally supporting our current students’ success and wellbeing.

If you seek to begin your graduate studies in the fall of 2021, we thank you for your understanding and wish you all the best in your endeavors. If you consider applying to our program for fall 2022 (for which the deadline is 1 February 2022), or have any other questions, please don’t hesitate to contact the Director of Graduate Studies, Professor Nancy Condee condee@pitt.edu.


The Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures offers a PhD that includes the MA Degree as a required step toward the PhD. The program encourages interdisciplinary work in training future scholars in Slavic Studies and it prepares students to be competitive on the national job market.

The graduate faculty’s scholarly expertise allows students to develop a foundation in Russian with special emphasis on culture and cinema from the Enlightenment to the present. The graduate curriculum challenges students to develop their own research questions informed by theoretical paradigms that have emerged over recent years across the humanities and social sciences.

Together with the curriculum, the scholarly profile of the department provides a framework to develop a solid knowledge of the cultural trajectory of the Russian-speaking world; analytic-conceptual skills for critical engagement with formalist, structuralist, and postmodern theoretical models; and writing skills necessary in the field of Russian cultural studies.

The department hosts a weeklong annual Russian Film Symposium invites internationally known scholars, journalists, critics, to campus to participate in discussion and share their research, supporting a lively and collegial intellectual environment beyond the classroom setting. In addition to their degree in Slavic Languages and Literatures, our students are required to pursue a certificate or related area in programs such as Cultural Studies, Film Studies, Gender, Sexualilty, and Women's Studies , East European Studies, or in another related area.

Our goal as faculty mentors is to facilitate the transition for our students from the classroom to independent scholarship in the academy. We welcome you to join us in this project.