Faculty of Arts

Department of German and Slavic Studies

Explore the languages, literatures, histories and cultures of Germany, Poland, Russia, Ukraine and Hungary and excel in critical and creative thinking, teamwork and communication.

Start any language as a beginner or enter at a higher level of competency. We offer many travel and study abroad options. A variety of our culture courses are taught in English.

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Oder bridge connecting Germany and Poland.

Department statement

Please read the statement from the Department of German and Slavic Studies and the Central and East European Studies Program at the University of Manitoba (March 3, 2022).

Statement against Russia's invasion of Ukraine

A Statement by the Department of German and Slavic Studies and the Program in Central and East European Studies at the University of Manitoba (March 3, 2022) 

The Department of German and Slavic Studies and the Program in Central and Eastern European Studies at the University of Manitoba strongly condemn the Russian Federation’s military aggression against Ukraine. Since 24 February 2022, 5:00 a.m. Kyiv time, Russia’s massive attack on Ukraine has started the worst security and humanitarian crisis in Europe since World War Two. This assault causes suffering, devastation, and damage to the people and cultural heritage of Ukraine. All the programs of our department (Ukrainian, Russian, Polish, German, and Hungarian) and the multi-disciplinary Program in Central and East European Studies stand united with Ukraine and its people in these perilous times. As scholars and educators, we reject President Putin’s justifications of this war and its misrepresentation as a “special military operation.” We declare our support for all those in Ukraine and beyond who are suffering because of this invasion. We stand together with the people of Ukraine, our students, partners, and colleagues from all ethnic backgrounds who are in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus, and around the world who oppose this war. The Department of German and Slavic Studies expresses solidarity with our partner institutions in Ukraine:  Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University, and the Lviv Polytechnic National University. If you feel the direct impact of the war (especially international students from Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus, who are enrolled in the courses taught by our Department) and need assistance, please let us know at: german_slavic@umanitoba.ca
 

News and events

  • Prairie Conference: Ukrainian Studies in Times of Global Transformations of the Humanities

    April 30 - May 3, 2026
    Location: University of Manitoba

    In partnership with Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden.
    The conference will be held in English.

    The Prairie Conference seeks to examine how Ukrainian studies and studies of the Global East can contribute to new approaches in cross-disciplinary and cross-area research and education. The event will bring scholars of Ukraine and the Global East into conversation with scholars, educators, and curators working on Canada, Africa, Latin America, and Asia. It will explore how scholars can draw on different theoretical frameworks (e.g., world-systems analysis, settler colonialism, neocolonialism, coloniality, decoloniality, inter-imperiality, creolization) and approaches from fields such as Indigenous studies, gender studies, peace and conflict studies, and environmental studies to develop new forms of cross-regional research and teaching. 

    The conference also aims to advance decolonizing approaches in pedagogies through a student-centered education. Undergraduate and graduate students will play an active role in planning and shaping the event, and a student-led panel, along with student presentations in other panels, will provide a visible platform for their research and perspectives.

    View the full conference program

  • A person's unclothed back, covered in shadows and a large handprint.

    Credit: Anastasiia Starko

  • Keynote: "Donetsk Chornobyl": Deep Time of the Elemental Warfare

    Svitlana Matviyenko, Simon Fraser University

    Thursday, April 30, 2026
    7:00 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.
    Archives & Special Collections, Room 330, Elizabeth Dafoe Library
    FREE. Reception to follow.

    Register

    This talk traces the layered histories and contemporary resonances of the 1979 industrial underground nuclear explosion beneath the Ukrainian city of Yunokomunarivsk, now, Bunhe / Бунге, currently under Russian occupation. The explosion, known as Object Klivazh, was the 530th nuclear detonation conducted on the territory of the USSR. Drawing on the notion of vertical occupation as an enduring ecological footprint that imposes a necropolitical regime on local communities, I examine how the legacies of Soviet wastelanding are reactivated in Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine. The case of Object Klivazh compels us to expand the conceptualization of war beyond visible surface fronts and to reckon with deep temporalities, subterranean infrastructures, and the slow unfolding of toxic durations, further intensified by landscapes warped through continuous shelling. Waste emerges here not as collateral but as an active agent, structuring environments both in the time of so-called peace and as a constitutive element of warfare itself. Situating this case within a broader account of contemporary warfare as environmental and atmospheric occupation, the talk considers how modern violence increasingly targets the elemental conditions that sustain life, such as air, soil, and water, along with the infrastructures that support them.

    Svitlana Matviyenko is an Associate Professor of Critical Media Analysis in the School of Communication of Simon Fraser University. Her research and teaching, informed by science & technology studies and history of science, are focused on information and cyberwar, media and environment, critical infrastructure studies and postcolonial and decolonial theory. Matviyenko’s current work on nuclear cultures & heritage investigates the practices of nuclear terror, weaponization of pollution and technogenic catastrophes during the Russian war in Ukraine. Matviyenko is a co-editor of two collections, The Imaginary App (MIT Press, 2014) and Lacan and the Posthuman (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). She is a co-author of Cyberwar and Revolution: Digital Subterfuge in Global Capitalism (Minnesota UP, 2019).

  • Keynote: Ukrainian People Are My People: From Ukraine to Treaty One

    Niigaan Sinclair, University of Manitoba

    Saturday, May 2, 2026
    2:30 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. CDT
    Room 307, Tier building
    FREE

    Register

    Niigaan Sinclair is Anishinaabe from Peguis First Nation. He is an award-winning writer, editor and professor of Indigenous Studies at the University of Manitoba who was named by Maclean’s magazine in 2022 as one of the most influential people in Canada. Niigaan is a multiple nominee of Canadian columnist of the year (winning in 2018) and his commentary appears weekly on multiple platforms across Canada – from the pages of The Winnipeg Free Press to TV shows on CBC, APTN and on his co-hosted podcast Niigaan and the Lone Ranger. His first book Wînipêk: Visions of Canada from an Indigenous Centre (McClelland & Stewart, 2024) was a national bestseller that won the 2024 Governor General Award for Non-fiction. He is a former secondary school teacher who won the 2019 Peace Educator of the Year from the Peace and Justice Studies Association based at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.

     

 

  • Language and Culture Summer Travel Study IN POLAND

    May 10 to May 30, 2026
    Earn up to 6 credit hours.

    This travel course to Gdańsk, Poland takes place over three weeks and allows students to take:

    • POL 2692: Polish Language and Culture (3 credit-hours)
    • POL 2660: Polish Cultural Memory Today (3 credit-hours), taught in English

    The courses may be taken independently or together providing 3 to 6 credit-hours in total.

    This Polish summer travel course offers the opportunity to learn and practice the language and discover Polish culture hands-on in a Polish speaking environment. Courses are located at the University of Gdańsk and are taught and administered by Magda Blackmore of the Department of German and Slavic Studies, University of Manitoba.

    Contact Magda Blackmore Magda.Blackmore@umanitoba.ca for more information.

    Learn more

  • Three students walking down a boardwalk alongside a river in Poland.

 

  • Learn German and discover German life and culture this summer IN GERMANY

    May 11 to June 19, 2025
    Earn up to 9 credit hours.

    This travel course to Essen, Germany is scheduled to take place over a period of six weeks and allows students to take:

    • GRMN 2110: Discovering German Life and Culture (3 credit-hours), taught in English
    • GRMN 1122: Introductory German 1 (3 credit-hours)
    • GRMN 1124: Introductory German 2 (3 credit-hours)

    The courses may be taken independently or all together providing 3 to 9 credit-hours in total.

    This German summer travel course offers the opportunity to learn and practice the language and discover German culture hands-on in a German speaking environment. All courses are located at the University of Duisburg-Essen (Essen campus) and are taught and administered by Karin James of the Department of German and Slavic Studies, University of Manitoba.

    Contact Karin James Karin.James@umanitoba.ca to receive more information.

    Learn more

  • Large sign for Universitat Duisburg-Essen in front of one of their educational buildings.

 

  • An illustration of two naked figures standing next to an open container that is unusually taller than they are.

    Illustration: Anastasiia Starko, untitled, 2024.

  • Teaching Eastern Europe Through a Decolonial Lens

    What parts of the world come to mind when you hear the phrase “decolonial history”? What does it mean to think about Eastern Europe through a postcolonial lens today? What key postcolonial themes are shaping the field of Eastern European studies, and how have scholars responded to them? How has Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine affected the teaching of Eastern European history? Why has global postcolonial scholarship traditionally overlooked Eastern Europe?

    To explore these questions, Oksana Dudko, along with Dr. Anna Hájková (University of Warwick, UK), were invited to participate in the History Workshop Podcast episode “Teaching Eastern Europe Through a Decolonial Lens.”

    The podcast forms part of a broader conversation on decolonization and teaching that emerged from The Prairie Workshop: Decolonizing European and Soviet History, organized by Dudko at the University of Saskatchewan in 2023.

    The workshop was followed by an academic forum published in History Workshop Journal, issue 99 (2025), titled “Teaching Eastern Europe in the Age of Russia’s Imperial Invasions: A Conversation on Being Postcolonial When No One Takes Any Notice.”

    Listen to the podcast

    Read the forum

 

UM-University of Trier Partnership Conference 2026

Canada, eh?
Fifty Years of Canadian Studies at Trier University: German and Canadian Perspectives

May 20-22, 2026
Trier, Germany

Call for papers: CLOSED November 1, 2025

Conference description

Established in 1976 and permanently institutionalised in the form of the Centre for Canadian Studies in 1996, Canadian Studies have a long-standing tradition at Trier University. Celebrating fifty years of Canadian Studies, this conference aims to both provide an overview of Canadian Studies today and to discuss current Canadian perspectives on the world. What is Canada’s position in an increasingly polarised world? Where does it find its place between the US and Europe? How can we understand Canada through its history, literature, language and arts? What can be learned from its multicultural society and Canada’s many immigrant communities? What can we learn from its Indigenous peoples’ histories and presents, and how do they contend with and challenge both anglophone and francophone white settler cultures? How do Canadians look at their own country, but also at the world beyond? Which issues seem particularly relevant to them? Which topics do Canadian scholars find striking when looking at Germany in particular? These are just some of the questions the conference wants to raise. By combining perspectives on Canada with perspectives from Canada, the conference aims to open up a transatlantic discussion of where we stand today, in Canada, Germany, and elsewhere.

Call for papers invitation

We invite contributions on and from Canada from all disciplines to consider its manifold lessons, challenges, perspectives, achievements and potentialities across time. Topics to be discussed at the conference may include, but are not limited to, political, social, historical, and environmental issues, or related to indigenous studies and questions of literary and artistic representation.

We are in particular looking forward to contributions from the University of Manitoba, one of the longest-standing international partners of Trier University. “Canada, eh?” will be our 21st partnership conference since our institutions became officially linked in 1985, and our discussions will form integral part of the celebrations. Trier University aims to cover hotel costs and food for our Winnipeg guests for the duration of the conference. 

We invite 200-400 word abstracts for 20-minute papers and a short biographical note to zks@uni-trier.de by November 1, 2025. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Conference contact information

Convenors:
Prof. Dr. Ralf Hertel, Director of the Centre for Canadian Studies 
JProf. Dr. Nele Sawallisch, Chairperson of the Freundeskreis Zentrum für Kanada-Studien

Contact:
The Centre for Canadian Studies / Zentrum für Kanada-Studien
University of Trier, 54286 Trier, Germany
zks@uni-trier.de 
Tel: +49 651 201-2212
Website
 

 

The Central and East European Program Lecture Series

Local, national and international experts present academic and community roundtables, book launches, graduate student presentations and more in this annual program sponsored by the CEES Program and the Department of German and Slavic Studies.  

Check back for upcoming lectures.

Programs of study

Course offerings

The course listing is a preliminary list of undergraduate and graduate courses per term that includes the course start and end date. 

Courses offered by the Department of German and Slavic Studies fall under six subject area categories:

  • German (GRMN)
  • Hungarian (HUNG)
  • Polish (POL)
  • Russian (RUSN)
  • Slavic (SLAV)
  • Ukrainian (UKRN)

View courses on Aurora

Students must search the system using each subject category to review the courses for that subject area.

Check back for updates and additional information including meeting times, instructors and method of delivery (e.g., on campus or remote learning).

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Graduate students

Finding a graduate advisor

Before submitting your application to the Faculty of Graduate Studies for the German Studies MA program or the Slavic Studies MA program, you will need to first contact the department via the Graduate Chair (German_Slavic@umanitoba.ca) to discuss an appropriate academic advisor for you.

You can also contact a German and Slavic Studies faculty member directly if you are specifically interested in their research.

In an email, please let us know the following:

  • your area(s) of study and research interest,
  • a bit about yourself, and how to best contact you,
  • a brief summary of your relevant education, community and/or work experiences,
  • a description of your proposed research topic.

Past theses

Past German Studies and Slavic Studies theses can be found on MSpace.

View past German Studies and Slavic Studies theses on MSpace

Donations

German and Slavic Studies is comprised of several vibrant, growing academic fields. With your support our language and culture programs can continue to be a vital part of this multicultural province. 

German Studies Endowment Fund

The German Studies Endowment Fund provides excellence awards to students majoring in German. By supporting our students, you give them the opportunity to become experts in German Studies and future ambassadors for German-Canadian relations.

Donate NOW to the German Studies Endowment Fund

The Polish Studies Endowment Fund

The Polish Studies Endowment Fund supports the continuous offering of Polish language and culture courses on an annual basis. Today, the fund plays a critical role in keeping our program at the forefront of Polish studies in western Canada.

Donate NOW to the Polish Endowment Fund

Become a donor

If you'd like to support one of German and Slavic Studies’ programs (German, Hungarian, Polish, Russian or Ukrainian), you can donate to one of the existing funds listed or you may be interested in establishing an endowment of your own at UM that supports the program, research or a professorship or an annually funded student award such as a bursary, fellowship, prize or scholarship. Your investment will help transform the lives of students and faculty.

Contact us

At times, departmental support staff are working from home and can be reached via phone or email.

Department of German and Slavic Studies
Room 328 Fletcher Argue Building
15 Chancellors Circle
University of Manitoba (Fort Garry campus)
Winnipeg, MB R3T 2N2 Canada

german_slavic@umanitoba.ca
204-474-9370
Monday to Friday 9:00 am - 3:00 pm