Bulgarian language and culture studies are returning to the University of Illinois.
The Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures is offering Bulgarian language courses for beginners and for heritage speakers starting on October 20. The classes are LCTL 101: Beginning Bulgarian and LCTL 201: Bulgarian for Heritage Speakers. There will be a culture course offered in the spring.
It’s the first Bulgarian language program in the U.S. in decades, according to Bulgaria’s Ministry of Education and Science.
The Bulgarian Consulate General in Chicago has been working to bring Bulgarian language teaching back to U.S. university classrooms for the past two years. They selected the University of Illinois as a partner for the initiative due to its previous experience and its location: Illinois once offered Bulgarian courses, and the state of Illinois and Chicago are home to the largest Bulgarian community in the U.S.
“We are very excited to partner with the Bulgarian government to make instruction in Bulgarian language and culture available at the university level, and we look forward to engaging with the Bulgarian community in Illinois,” said department head David Cooper. “We have seen a good response to Bulgarian related events on campus that the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center has put on and hope to see students take advantage of this new opportunity.”