One of the most exciting interdisciplinary and interdepartmental opportunities at the University of Chicago are graduate and faculty workshops sponsored by the Council for Advanced Study (CAS) graduate workshops. Workshops in the Historical Linguistics (Language Variation and Change), the Anthropology of Europe, Russian Studies, Poetry and Poetics, the Literature of Trauma, and more foster communication among scholars from different fields and methodologies. The CAS also offers the opportunity for graduate students and faculty to design new workshops on a regular basis.
Every spring, the Slavic Department organizes the annual graduate student conference known as The Slavic Forum. A student run conference drawing graduate students from all over the world for more than two decades, Slavic Forum is an excellent venue for scholarly exchange and professional development. The conference also awards two esteemed prizes named for faculty members who have made lasting contributions to the department and the field: the Anna Lisa Crone award for best paper on literature and the Daniela Hristova award for best paper in linguistics.
The annual Medieval Slavic Workshop brings scholars from across the world to discuss all aspects of Slavic medieval culture. And the Chicago Linguistic Society (CLS), the oldest running linguistics conference in the U.S., provides a wonderful opportunity for students in Slavic linguistics to present their work at a highly visible forum, Chicago is home to a rich tradition in Slavic and East-Central European culture, as witnessed by its recent two-year series of exhibits, performances, films, and lectures. Chicago can boast that it is the largest Polish city outside of Poland and the Czech, Slovak, Slovene, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Lithuanian communities also have long-standing histories in the city and its suburbs.
Central Europe Workshop
The Central Europe workshop (formerly Modern Europe and Russian Studies workshop) meets every other Tuesday afternoon throughout the school year. The workshop meets to read and discuss drafts of dissertation chapters by U Chicago students, as well as papers by outside scholars in relevant fields.
Language Variation and Change Workshop
The Language Variation and Change Workshop provides an interdisciplinary forum for graduate students and faculty to discuss the motivations and consequences of language change from diverse perspectives (incl. linguistic, historical, social, cognitive, and computational).