Home / The University / Faculties / Faculty of Classical and Modern Philology / Departments / German and Scandinavian Studies

   

Head:

Assoc.Prof. Maria Endreva-Cherganova, DSc

 

Central building 4th floor, Room 171
e-mail: m.endreva@uni-sofia.bg

 

Programmes launched:
German Studies 1923
Scandinavian Studies 1992

 

The Department of German and Scandinavian Studies was founded within the former Institute of History and Philology as early as 1909. In 1923 the Institute split and the department of German was set up as a separate unit. In 1999 the departments of German Studies and Scandinavian Studies merged into the Department of German and Scandinavian Studies.

Specialists in German, German literature and culture graduate from the Programme in German Studies. They become highly qualified translators, teachers, editors, journalists, correspondents, state officials, diplomats, and academics.
The Department offers Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctoral Programmes in German Studies. Sixty students are admitted to the B.A. Programme per year and cover its full course in eight semesters. The students follow a credit system, which forms the basis for their future mobility within the EU. There are two M.A. Programmes – in Linguistics and Translation and Literature and Culture, respectively.
At present there are seven PhD students at the Department following individual study plans.
A special programme is offered at the department for retraining graduates of the humanities giving them a degree in education and a teacher qualification.

The department maintains active contacts and partnerships with various similar institutions in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Students are offered opportunities for short-term studies at these institutions and are encouraged to participate in the summer schools and seminars of the respective institutions in language, literature and culture. They also have free access to the University Library, The Philological Library, The German Library and the Austrian Library.

The Programme in Scandinavian Studies is the only one of its kind in Bulgaria. The dynamism of its development, the challenges it offers and the opportunities for realization it provides make it a desired programme for many Bulgarian and international students. It was founded in 1991 to meet the ever increasing interest in our country towards the Nordic countries and the model of society maintained there and to satisfy the need for qualified specialists in the fields of Scandinavian languages and cultures.
The Department offers Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctoral Programmes in Scandinavian Studies. The number of students admitted each year to the B.A. Programme is around forty and the duration of the course of study is four years. There are two M.A. Programmes – a two-semester programme in Language, Culture and Translation (for Scandinavian Studies graduates) and a three-semester programme in Nordic Studies (for graduates in other fields).
The main language in the curriculum is determined by the year in which the students are enrolled: Swedish in even-number years and Norwegian in odd-number years. Starting from the fourth semester, a second Scandinavian language is studied; it may be Swedish, Norwegian or Danish, depending on the student’s choice. Finnish is offered as an optional course, and there is also a theoretical course in Icelandic grammar. The subjects range from Scandinavian literatures, mythology, and cultural studies of the region to specialising courses in translation, reception theory, cultural and historic studies of the area and applied and theoretical aspects of linguistics. The staff are highly qualified specialists in the field. M.A. graduates who have shown their potential and skills for academic work and research are also recruited as teaching staff. The Programme maintains contacts with various Nordic institutions and scholarships for students and teachers are provided regularly. The students have the opportunity to obtain teacher qualification via an optional pedagogical module.
The Programme in Scandinavian Studies boasts its own Nordica library. The book holdings of the library are enriched each year with books in all Scandinavian languages – 7,500 volumes of fiction and criticism, textbooks and journals, albums, video and audio tapes, as well as multi-media products. The library offers PC sets to its students as well as notebook computer sets, modern photocopying facilities, tape recorders, etc.

 

Lecturers