News & events

UVic’s new School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures will launch in September 2024 and will integrate the Departments of French and Francophone Studies, Germanic and Slavic Studies, Hispanic and Italian Studies, and Linguistics.

Recent Slavic Studies MA graduate Hanna Protasova won an Honourable Mention in this year's Canadian Association for Ukrainian Studies (CAUS) graduate student conference paper award. Her essay was titled "Between Silence and Mourning: The Representation of the Holocaust in 1940s Soviet Ukrainian Fiction" and was based on MA research she did here at UVic. She is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Western Ontario.

We look forward to hosting Dr. Olesya Khromeychuk this Monday, January 22nd! Join us in Room A121 of the Cornett Building at 1PM to hear this public lecture titled "From Visibility to Knowledge: The Case of Ukraine".

Our Dr. Megan Swift was interviewed by Belfry Theatre about the Baba Yaga Slavic witch character in advance of the premier of Yaga by Kat Sandler at Belfry Theatre, which runs from September 12 to October 8 this fall.

Congratulations to Farida Abdoulaye Hamadou! This VKURA project will investigate how literature has become a form of resistance, an instrument of self-expression, and a powerful way of reconciling with the past.

Congratulations to our JCURA winners, Maria Kalmykova and Angelina Schwarz who presented their project posters at the JCURA research fair!

The department was delighted to celebrate student excellence in our March 1st student award ceremony – the first one in three years!

An intimate co-creation of three graphic novelists and four Holocaust survivors, But I Live consists of three illustrated stories based on the experiences of each survivor during and after the Holocaust.

On Monday May 30th, the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies hosted a Ukrainian Poetry Reading via Zoom with five award-winning Ukrainian poets reading selected works – Borys Khersonsky, Lyudmyla Khersonska, Oksana Lutsyshyna, Maryana Savka, and Lyuba Yakimchuk. Additionally, Ostap Kin, who is an accomplished translator of Ukrainian poetry into English, shared his experience of translation as a practice of intercultural exchange. Their poems were read in Ukrainian, and with English translations of their texts presented by students from the Department of English.

Dr. Matt Pollard won the 2022 Diversity & Inclusion Grant for Curriculum and Programming by the Waterloo Centre for German Studies. This grant was created to support scholars and programs in their efforts to diversify German studies in Canada.

Dr. Schuetze's latest book, German Grammar: Reviewed and Retold, is a user-friendly grammar/workbook designed to give German learners a great basis to build an in-depth knowledge of German.

Dr. Megan Swift’s won the International Research Society in Children’s Literature (IRSCL) Book Award for Picturing the Page: Illustrated Children’s Literature and Reading Under Lenin and Stalin (University of Toronto Press, 2020).

One of North America's most popular university courses on vampires turned 20 in Fall 2021. Communications Officer Philip Cox sat down for an interview with the vampire expert himself, Dr. Peter Golz to talk about his undying interest in Vampire Studies.

Congratulations to our PhD candidate Emmanuelle Guenette on receiving a 2021 President’s Fellowship in Research-Enriched Teaching!

Applicants to the MA in Germanic, Slavic, and Holocaust Studies, please be aware that we have moved to a biennial intake model and our next intake of students will be for fall 2022, with an application deadline of January 15, 2022. Thank you for your interest in our program and we hope to hear from you then.