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Literatures, Cultures & Linguistics News

French professor offers interdisciplinary course through HRI Interseminars Initiative

The Interseminars Initiative is a Mellon Foundation-funded program at the Humanities Research Institute dedicated to advancing collaborative, cross-disciplinary graduate education.

Literatures, Cultures & Linguistics Building at UIUC

SLCL welcomes nine new faculty members

The School of Literatures, Cultures & Linguistics welcomed nine new faculty members this fall.

SLCL faculty members receive John A. and Grace W. Nicholson Professorships

The College of Liberal Arts & Sciences has named several accomplished faculty members to endowed chair and professorship positions, including two from the School of Literatures, Cultures & Linguistics.

Highlighted Courses

Painting by Russian artist Nikolai Nikolaevich Karazin

Eastern Europe and Postcoloniality

This course examines historical and scholarly debates about the (post)coloniality of the Central and East European regions.

SLAV 452

Smile now, Cry later (Tlacolulokos, 2017)

Unwritten Textualities: Indigenous Literatures and Beyond

This course explores Indigenous textualities (literature, art, textiles, etc.) from Nahua, Maya, and Zapotec communities in Mesoamerica and the United States.

SPAN 395

Tracing Flight: Exile, Migration and Asylum

This introductory course examines how forced migration has been portrayed and defined in German-language literature, film, and political thought from the Thirty Years’ War through the Second World War to the present-day.

GER 199

Modern Masterpieces of Western Culture

A comparative study of major works of literature, philosophy and culture in the Western tradition from the Enlightenment to today, from Descartes and Voltaire to Dickinson and Calvino.

CWL 242

Cinema and Machines in the Age of A.I.: Asian Intelligence

This interdisciplinary course explores the intertwined histories of cinema, machines, and AI through the lens of Global Asian media cultures.

EALC 398/550

Archival Futures, Colonial Pasts: Rethinking the Latin American Archive

This course moves beyond conventional understandings of the colonial archive as a repository of knowledge to examine how the voices of marginalized groups—including women, Black, and Indigenous peoples—have been both preserved and silenced through archival practices.

SPAN 466

American Voices: Linguistic Diversity in the USA

This course explores the rich linguistic diversity of the United States, examining how language use reflects and shapes social identities, cultural histories, power relations, and inequalities.

LING 250

Romare Bearden’s Circe, 1977; collage, paper, foil, paint, and graphite on fiberboard.

Greco-Roman Antiquity and US Minority Cultures

Engagements with ancient Greece and Rome by Native American, African American, Latino, Asian American, or other racially or ethnically minoritized writers, artists, or filmmakers.

CLCV 224

Caspar David Friedrich, Woman in Front of the Setting Sun, 1818.

Happiness and the Good Life

This course explores the foundational question of what it means to live well or to live a good, meaningful, and happy life, introducing students to resources and concepts from Western philosophical and theological traditions to explore this central question.

REL 231

Translation and Interpreting: Reflective Practice

Through discussion of primary texts and case studies, this course aims to take students beyond codified codes of professional ethics to discover the intellectual traditions (e.g., hermeneutics and philosophy of language, critical social theory, virtue ethics, etc.) that frame reflective practice.

TRST 500