Please Note: Not accepting applications to the MA Russian program at this time.

MA in Russian:

The MA degree provides students a solid foundation in the discipline. In addition to core requirements within the discipline, students also have the opportunity to enroll in such courses as Applied Language Pedagogy, open to both German and Russian graduate students.

Our MA program offers a great deal of variety as we expand the notion of graduate studies to include diverse topics connected to literary studies, cultural studies, and applied linguistics. We are strongly committed to interdisciplinary approaches, both within our own department with our German colleagues, and with other departments at the university.

Our faculty members offer expertise in various fields. We have three professors who are all active in research and teaching. Currently we are particularly strong in the fields of literary studies from the 18^th to the 21^st centuries. We are a friendly, dedicated group of individuals who realize the importance of providing graduate students with intellectual and moral support during their studies.

Specifically, the MA program offers students a solid introduction to some of the basics of advanced study in Russian. As an MA student, you would enroll in one required course – Russian 600, Methods of Research – which introduces you to the most important skills for succeeding in graduate study. In addition, you choose additional seminars from a range of courses. Recent seminars have included History of the Language, Contemporary Authors, and a joint course with German in Language Didactics. Our seminars run for two hours per week, and usually have between five and ten students. The language of instruction is in English and/or Russian.

As a candidate for an MA, you have the choice of completing a thesis, a master’s research paper or a courses-only MA. If you choose the thesis option, you are required to take four courses in addition to RUSS 600, and write a thesis under the close supervision of a faculty member. The research paper option would see you take six courses in addition to RUSS 600, and you would write a long research paper instead of a thesis. For the courses-only option, you will take seven courses and the RUSS 600. We recommend that, if you are thinking of doing PhD studies in Russian, you choose the thesis option. Recent theses will give you a good idea of the diversity of topics which have engaged MA students at Waterloo.

Normally, you can expect to spend two semesters completing course work, and then one to two semesters working on your thesis or master’s research paper. In addition, you may wish to take advantage of our long-running exchange program with the Slavic Studies program at the Universität Mannheim in Germany.

Our graduate students have access to some excellent resources here at the university. The library’s collection of books and journals in the humanities, and specifically Slavic studies, is first-rate. We also encourage students to develop their professional skills by integrating professional development into our graduate seminars. We provide opportunities for students to present papers on research or pedagogical topics at colloquia here on campus, and some give papers at scholarly conferences.