Program Dates: June 19, 2023-August 13, 2023
Applications for Summer 2023 are OPEN for CESSI, MEDLI, MULTI, NORD, SEASI, SASLI, and SIPI.
Each summer undergraduates, graduate students, professionals, and other non-traditional students from across the country come to UW-Madison to study a language at the Wisconsin Intensive Summer Language Institutes (WISLI). WISLI provides high-quality instruction of less commonly taught languages (LCTLs). WISLI courses are intensive, condensing an entire year of language study in the 8-week summer session. The institutions combine classroom learning with a variety of co-curricular activities.
The core strength of WISLI is its longstanding summer language institutes, several of which were founded by consortia of universities to ensure that high-quality instruction is offered in an accessible forum during the summer.
WISLI is housed under the new unit in the International Division—the Language Program Office (LPO), with support from the College of Letters and Science (L&S).
WISLI is home to seven summer language institutes which offer high-quality courses in over 30 less commonly taught languages (LCTLs) and a self-directed multilanguage seminar. Learn more about each respective institute below.
Central Eurasian Studies Summer Institute (CESSI)
Kazakh, Tajik, Uyghur, Uzbek
Supported by: CREECA and CESSI Consortium (13 members)
Middle Eastern & Mediterranean Language Institute (MEDLI)
Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Turkish
Supported by: IRIS NRC, European Studies, African Studies, Middle East Studies, Jewish Studies, and Asian Languages and Cultures at UW-Madison
Intensive Summer Multilanguage Seminar (MULTI)
A program that allows students to engage in online, performance-based self-instructional the study of a less commonly taught African, Southeast Asian, or South Asian language.
Supported by IRIS NRC and the African Studies Program at UW-Madison.
South Asia Summer Language Institute (SASLI)
Bengali, Dari, Gujarati, Hindi, Malayalam, Marathi, Pashto, Sanskrit, Sinhala, Tamil, Telugu, Tibetan, Urdu
Supported by: CSA and SASLI Consortium (10 member institutions, 1 contributing institution)
Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute (SEASSI)
Burmese, Filipino, Hmong, Indonesian, Javanese, Khmer, Lao, Thai, Vietnamese
Supported by: CSEAS and SEASSI Consortium (11 member institutions)
Summer Intensive Portuguese Institute (SIPI)
Brazilian Portuguese
Supported by: LACIS
Scandinavian Summer Language Institute (NORD)
Norwegian, Swedish
Supported by: GNS+