5835 S. Kimbark Ave., Judd Hall 323, Chicago IL 60637   ::   (773) 702-0866   ::    ceeres@uchicago.edu

programs

The Center does not itself offer a separate master's degree; however, the Center strongly supports the development of students by offering joint programs with other departments in the University. For instance, the Center administers a joint A.M./M.B.A degree in conjunction with the Graduate School of Business.

Interdisciplinary A.M. degrees are available through the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities (MAPH) and the Master of Arts Program in the Social Sciences (MAPSS) with concentrations in a CEERES language and area studies. In addition, the Center cooperates with the Committee on International Relations in providing a master's program in international relations with specialization in Russia and Eastern Europe.

CEERES administers Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships from Title VI of the U.S. Department of Education. We are currently approved to give awards for the following languages (Note: It is possible to get permission to give awards for other languages spoken in the CEERES region, particularly for summer awards, on a case-by-case basis):

  • Armenian
  • Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian
  • Czech
  • Polish
  • Russian
  • Uzbek

These fellowships aid students who are performing research on CEERES-related topics or studying CEERES-related languages, regardless of their department. CEERES faculty and students teach, study, and conduct research in many departments across campus. A description of some departments with which we currently work closely (with a link to their respective home pages) and their academic programming follows below.

  • Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures
    This department advances research and provides instruction in the Slavic languages and literatures. The department offers a diverse array of courses in language, linguistics, and literature. Undergraduates may earn degrees with any of the following concentrations: Russian Language and Literature, Russian Linguistics, West Slavic Language & Literature, or Interdisciplinary Studies. Graduate concentrations include Russian Literature, Slavic Linguistics and Languages, Interdisciplinary Studies, and Polish and Czech Studies. The department also offers a joint B.A./M.A. degree in Slavic Languages and Literatures, strongly encourages their students to engage in study abroad opportunities, and sponsors a variety of guest lectures, seminars, and workshops throughout the year.
  • Department of Linguistics
    Founded in the mid-1930's, the Department of Linguistics at the University of Chicago is the oldest linguistics department in the United States. It is theory-oriented with a deep empirical interest in languages. One of its outstanding characteristics is its commitment to a wide range of approaches to the study of language. Interdisciplinary, interdepartmental study is encouraged, and students regularly work with faculty in several other departments. Students are expected to become active researchers as soon as possible after their arrival here. Many students come with strong undergraduate training in linguistics, or with a Master's degree; others come with strong training in fields such as philosophy, mathematics, or a particular language or language group. The faculty are involved in synchronic and diachronic research on languages from around the world. These varied interests are reflected in the topics of the dissertations that have been written in the Department. The undergraduate program in linguistics is designed to provide a solid, integrated introduction to the scientific study of language through coursework in the core subdisciplines of linguistics, as well as to ensure that the student has a language background sufficient to provide a complement to the theoretical parts of the program and for an understanding of the complexities of human language. This program provides students with a general expertise in the field and prepares them for productive advanced study in linguistics.
  • Department of Anthropology
    The Department of Anthropology at the University of Chicago has a long and proud tradition of scholarly excellence and leadership in the discipline. This is, perhaps, an even more exciting time than usual because they have just made substantial additions of excellent young anthropologists to our faculty. They are intent on maintaining the traditional foci of the Department while developing emerging centers of theoretical interest in the discipline and beyond. Some of the areas that are currently enjoying particular attention by faculty and students in archaeology as well as linguistic and sociocultural anthropology include: semiotic approaches to culture, postcoloniality, human rights and indigenous rights, globalization, critiques of neoliberalism, the politics of gender and sexuality, the analysis of place and space, and the anthropological study of science. Each of these research areas is enhanced by the Department's longstanding commitment to training students in the history and foundations of social and cultural theory. The encouragement of free-ranging discussions with fellow students and small, hands-on research seminars and workshops contributes to the excellent training of Anthropology students.
  • Department of Political Science
    From the very beginning, the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago has been a pioneer in the development of social scientific understandings of government and politics. Harold Gosnell, Harold Lasswell, Grant McConnell, Duncan MacRae, Charles Merriam, Hans Morgenthau, Herbert Storing, Leo Strauss, Leonard White, and Quincy Wright all taught at Chicago. Gabriel Almond, V.O. Key, Harold Lasswell, Robert Martin, Herman Pritchett, David Truman, and Herbert Simon -- the only political scientist ever awarded a Nobel Prize for his intellectual achievements -- all received their doctorates from Chicago. "The Chicago department was the cutting edge of development of the field of political science," Pritchett recalled of his days as a graduate student. "The students who were graduate students when I was became the leaders of the profession." Much has changed at Chicago since Pritchett studied here, but fortunately the most important things have not.

    The University of Chicago and its Political Science Department have maintained the unabashed intellectualism, the disregard for disciplinary and subdisciplinary boundaries, the commitment to diversity of approach and method, and the pure appreciation of fine scholarship that have always been the distinguishing features of this institution.
  • Department of History
    Studying history sheds light on human experience and thought in different times and places. It enables students to make sense of the present in terms of the past, and the past in terms of the present. The Department of History at the University of Chicago has a long-standing commitment to interdisciplinary and comparative history, while at the same time providing training in core methodologies, narratives, and sources of premodern, national, and international histories. In preparing their courses of study and research, students at Chicago are encouraged to consult with faculty across the department as well as across the University more generally.

    Special recognition should be made of the University’s Civilization Sequences, particularly that for Russian Civilization. The civilization sequences, part of the general education requirement of the College curriculum, introduce undergraduates to primary sources and significant documents in one of the world’s civilizations. Students concentrating in Russian civilization gain competence in the Russian language as a tool for further work, some knowledge of one or more of the social sciences as they deal with Russian materials, and a thorough grounding in selected aspects of Russian history, politics, economics, or related subjects. The Bachelor of Arts program in Russian Civilization can provide an appropriate background for careers in business, journalism, or government, or for graduate studies in one of the social sciences disciplines.
  • Department of Art History
    Established in 1902, the Art History Department of the University of Chicago enters its second century as a leader of innovative teaching and research in a multi-faceted discipline. Faculty specialization ranges from the ancient world to modern cinema, but paths of inquiry are strongly interdisciplinary and traditional field boundaries are often traversed.
  • Department of Comparative Literature
    Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago is dedicated to the multidisciplinary, historically self-reflective and cross-cultural study of texts, traditions, and discourses. One of the earliest programs of its kind in America, Chicago's Committee on Comparative Studies in Literature was inspired by the same spirit of thinking globally that prompted the University to establish the first core course in non-Western cultures. Changes in literary study over the past few decades have made comparative literature, with its openness to cross-disciplinary work and non-Western literatures and its rigorous questioning of aesthetic and critical categories, more central than ever to the humanities. Recognizing this trend, the Committee on Comparative Studies re-organized itself in 1995 as the Department of Comparative Literature, expanding its faculty and course offerings and extending its linguistic and cultural reach. With specialists of international reputation in such diverse fields as Russian film studies, critical theory, Western medieval and Renaissance studies, literature and science, Chinese and Western comparative history and literature, and problems of nationalism and empire, Comparative Literature at Chicago offers students the opportunity to grapple in a rigorous way with the most pressing issues in literary studies today: the questioning of national and cultural boundaries and identities; the struggle over literature's epistemological, ethical, or social authority; the debate about what counts as literature, and why; and the interaction between literature and other cultural or intellectual practices.
  • Department of Music
    Founded in 1933, the Department of Music at the University of Chicago came to prominence in the 1960's as a major center of musical research and composition. Once the institutional home of such leading scholars and composers as Leonard B. Meyer, Edward Lowinsky, Ralph Shapey, and Howard Mayer Brown, today its time-honored emphases on composition and historical musicology are combined with more recently developed strengths in theory, analysis, and ethnomusicology. Both graduate and undergraduate programs encourage training in all areas of musical scholarship and in cross-disciplinary research.
  • The Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
    The languages and civilizations of the Near East have been a major part of the University's teaching and research commitment since its inception. William Rainey Harper, the University's founder and first president, was a Hebrew scholar and author of a grammar widely used in institutions of higher learning for more than three-quarters of a century. Research done at Chicago has helped to form the very basis of the modern disciplines of Assyriology, Egyptology, and ancient Near Eastern Archaeology. The creation of "Islamic Civilization" as a curriculum was effected at Chicago. In all these areas and related subfields a faculty of distinguished scholars now extends this tradition, keeping the University of Chicago at the forefront of worldwide developments in Near Eastern studies. Graduates of the Department have for decades been among the leading international experts in their fields. An interdisciplinary approach to learning is a characteristic of the Chicago intellectual tradition. In the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations students are encouraged to participate in courses, seminars, and workshops where they, as well as the NELC faculty, interact with their counterparts in anthropology, art history, classics, comparative literature, history, law, linguistics, political science, and religious studies. NELC also has a joint degree program with the Department of Linguistics.
  • The Committee on Cinema and Media Studies
    The history of film in Chicago dates back to the 1893 Columbian Exhibition, when on the grounds of the Midway Plaisance - within sight of the newly established University of Chicago - visitors saw their first moving images. Motion pictures have been an intellectual and cultural concern at the University ever since - from the Chicago School sociologists and psychologists who studied the effects of movie-going on children, to the decades of students who have made Doc Films the oldest and most amibitious student-run film society in the country. Recently, film and visual media have assumed even more prominence at the University through the groundbreaking scholarship of faculty in cinema and visual culture and the establishment of the Committee on Cinema and Media Studies. The Committee on Cinema and Media Studies is dedicated to pursuing innovative work in the history, theory, and criticism of film and related media, with additional strengths in video production and performance studies. While the program centers around the medium of film, the cinema is understood as the point of entry for a whole new culture of moving images and sounds that includes television, video, and digital media, just as it considers earlier practices such as the magic lantern, photography, and sound recording. We emphasize both historical and aesthetic dimensions of film and cinema, with the aesthetic broadly understood as referring not only to particular modes of expression, representation, and style but also, more generally to forms of cinema experience and film culture. We offer courses primarily in U.S. American, the major European, Russian, and East Asian cinemas. Drawing on the University's longstanding tradition in cross-disciplinary scholarship and strong programs in area studies, our research and teaching approaches national cinemas from inter- and transnational perspectives.
  • Committee on Jewish Studies
    Jewish Studies has been an important field of research at The University of Chicago since the days when its first President, the Biblical scholar William Rainey Harper, oversaw the beginnings of programs in Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations. A few decades later, these early initiatives received a huge institutional boost with the founding of the Oriental Institute, which remains one of the pre-eminent centers for the study of ancient Near Eastern language, civilization, and archeology. But the flourishing of Jewish Studies over the years at Chicago has also been sustained by appointments in a wide range of departments: professorships of Jewish Hellenism in Classics, Medieval Jewish Philosophy in Philosophy, Jewish Social and Economic History in History, to name only a few. During the past decade, the University has appointed eminent scholars in the study of Hebrew Bible, Midrash, Jewish Medieval Studies, Hebrew Literature, American-Jewish Literature, and German-Jewish Culture. Working together, they have created one of the most modern comprehensive, distinguished and interdisciplinary programs in Jewish Studies available at any American university. Advanced degree programs are available at the M.A. and Ph.D. degree levels. Students can make full use of the resources in Jewish Studies available through the Divinity School, the departments of Germanic Studies, History, Linguistics, Philosophy, Music, Near Eastern Languages and Literature, and the Oriental Institute.
  • Master of Arts Program in the Social Sciences (MAPSS)
    The Master of Arts Program in the Social Sciences (MAPSS) is a one-year program of graduate studies leading to the A.M. degree. MAPSS offers a wide variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary opportunities for advancing academic or career goals, while allowing flexibility unusual among graduate programs. MAPSS makes the resources of a great university available for student-centered and highly individualized programs of graduate study. Each student works closely with the director and an assigned preceptor on all aspects of the program, from designing a customized curriculum, to defining the area of scholarly research, to writing the thesis. MAPSS provides every student with a vibrant and collaborative intellectual community and core-course training in social science theory. Students meet a social sciences methods requirement and choose seven additional courses from the full range of regular doctoral and graduate professional offerings of the departments and committees of the Division of Social Sciences and of the other divisions and professional schools of the University.
  • Master of Arts Program in the Humanities
    The University of Chicago's Masters Program in the Humanities (MAPH) was established in 1996 to address the needs and interests of tremendously diverse people who stand to benefit from a year of intensive, rigorous humanistic inquiry. All MAPH students take a core course on the foundations of interpretive theory and a colloquium designed to introduce students to the theoretical issues that shape the Core. Interpretive theory concerns not only how to work with cultural and intellectual materials, but which sorts of materials constitute objects of study and why. Accordingly, developments in interpretive theory have shaped many of the most hotly contested questions in humanistic inquiry in the past quarter century. Questions about the integrity of traditional disciplines, the status of cross-disciplinary work, the character of academic professionalization, of scholarship, and of appropriate research topics and archives cluster around work on interpretive theory. Distinguished faculty members from different disciplines teach the core jointly. It gives MAPH students a shared base. Working from this common background, in consultation with advisors, MAPH students use their seven elective courses to design programs of study tailored to their specific interests, culminating in their thesis projects. Some students have interdisciplinary programs of study and theses. Others do not. MAPH thesis projects are as diverse as its students, ranging from traditional research papers to creative works. Throughout the year MAPH works to foster a vibrant intellectual community with frequent social hours, cultural events, and cross-disciplinary thesis workshops specifically for MAPH students.