The Department of Slavonic and Finno-Ugrian Studies is the only Department in India which offers courses in Slavonic languages namely Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Polish, Russian and Hungarian from the Finno-Ugrian group of languages. Today’s interconnected world places several challenges before contemporary students in respect of the knowledge and understanding of various global languages and cult
ures. The Department addresses the immediate need of a large number of students who aspire to travel and be academically prepared for study and employment in global institutions. In this sense, the Department fulfills a largely under-served critical need in the country by directly making students conscious of a rich heritage and making them employable. The courses offered by the Department have a two-fold aim - to empower students to become fluent users of these languages and to acquaint them with the diverse and rich civilizations of the important regions of East - Central Europe and Russia. The approach to teaching adopted by the Department is interdisciplinary and intercultural and we aim to create and emphasize a broad-based outlook that can promote critical and analytical skills of the students and enable them to research both traditional and emerging disciplines. The Department provides an exciting, vibrant, and affable environment to pursue language and literature study by critically exposing students to some of the greatest literary works and scholarly writings produced in East-Central Europe and Russia and encouraging them to analyze them against the backdrop of Western European and Indian cultures. This is further enhanced by developing language skills not merely through text-books and dynamic interaction but also by laying emphasis on other activities like film shows, exhibitions, quiz programmes, celebration of national festivals etc. This provides direct exposure to the languages and cultures of these societies and makes language learning a more meaningful and enjoyable experience with a lasting and long-term impact.
