International Research Opportunities

Gerhard Richter (courtesy of the artist)
Gerhard Richter, “Sils, grau” (2003), oil on canvas. Courtesy of the artist.

Study Abroad

The Germanic Studies Department has two regular exchange programs that offer graduate students an excellent opportunity to spend a semester or a year abroad: with the University of Konstanz and with the Friedrich Schlegel Graduiertenschule für literaturwissenschaftliche Studien. Graduate students also have the opportunity to work as on-site coordinators and/or instructors in our study-abroad program in Vienna. In addition, many of our graduate students secure funding to conduct dissertation research abroad, either through the DAAD and the Fulbright Scholar Program or directly from institutions in German-speaking countries, such as the Internationale Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften or the Klassik Stiftung Weimar. Finally, our students have the opportunity to conduct archival research at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach.

The Berlin Program

“In addition to our partnership with the Schlegel-Schule at the FU, the Berlin Program offers up to one year of dissertation or postdoctoral research support at the Freie Universität Berlin, one of Germany’s leading research universities. It is open to scholars in all social science and humanities disciplines, including historians working on German and European history since the mid-18th century.

The Berlin Program is administered in close cooperation with our North American partner and co-sponsor, the German Studies Association (GSA), the largest organization of scholars, professionals, and students who focus on the study of German-speaking Europe from all periods of history and all relevant disciplines.

Find out more about our program at http://www.fu-berlin.de/bprogram, read the information on fellowships and application, or contact bprogram@zedat.fu-berlin.de

Universität Leipzig

The exchange with the Universität Leipzig is the most recent addition to our regular exchange programs. It is a particularly attractive program for students interested in adding a genuine philosophical dimension to their doctoral work. Leipzig is today arguably the center for the study of German Idealism and its impact on contemporary philosophical debates. For this reason, this particular exchange is run in cooperation with the University of Chicago Department of Philosophy. An interesting feature of the Chicago/Leipzig partnership is that it includes mini-seminars conducted on both sides of the Atlantic with faculty and students from both institutions. We see the Leipzig exchange developing in the years ahead as a key component of the Chicago Germanic Studies Department’s subspecialty in German philosophy.