Frankfurt Exchange
Graduate Student Exchange Program with the Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main Philosophy Department
The Department of Philosophy is proud to announce the establishment of the Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main Exchange Program. Under the auspices of this program, graduate students in the Department of Philosophy who are at the ABD stage, and some other Northwestern graduate students from departments and programs participating in Northwestern's Critical Theory Cluster (contact Mark Alznauer for more information about eligibility), will be able to apply to spend up to one year taking courses or pursuing doctoral research at the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Although they will have an official “audit” status, and the courses will not count towards departmental requirements, they can count for the Graduate Certificate in Critical Theory. They may submit papers, receive feedback, and receive a signed confirmation of attendance by the Goethe University professor.
Funding
Students are expected to seek DAAD (or similar external) funding for their period of overseas studies in Germany. However with departmental approval students could use a component of their second year of portable fellowship funding. Participating students will not be charged tuition by the host university.
For further information, contact Mark Alznauer or Cristina Lafont.
Please note
- It is your responsibility, not the department’s, to find an interval of time when you have no teaching responsibilities. You might try to arrange to have an open term (in a year in which you otherwise do have teaching responsibilities), or else you might wait until you have a year without teaching responsibilities.
- NO FIRST- OR SECOND-YEAR STUDENT WILL BE GRANTED PERMISSION TO GO ABROAD SAVE IN EXCEPTIONAL CIRCUMSTANCES.
- Frankfurt is an expensive city; it will probably cost you more money to live there than it would cost you to live here for the same amount of time. You should plan for this.
- You should consider applying to the Graduate School for money to support your airfare; additional departmental funds may be available to help defray this cost.
- It is your responsibility to find housing while there. You may want to contact the Departmental Administrators at Frankfurt’s Philosophy Department, or Frankfurt students who have visited here, to get some assistance regarding where to look.
Criteria for selection include
- how clear an motivation there is for the student’s proposed time in Frankfurt (including faculty there with whom they might work)
- how well-conceived is the research plan for study abroad
- seniority in our program (# of years in the program and/or closeness to finishing the dissertation)