About the Department of Spanish & Portuguese
Our institution is committed to excellence in teaching and mentoring, along with the production of new knowledge that is the hallmark of a strong department. We are known for our focus on the intersections between language, literature, culture, and politics, our community engagement, and our MA track in Hispanic Applied Linguistics. We bridge several intellectual fields across Spain and Spanish America and between North, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and Brazil, as we rethink the specificity of our cultures.
The Department is renowned for its multidisciplinary strengths in Latin American and Lusophone literatures and cultures as well as its faculty research in the areas of the history of ideas, Southern Cone literature, Judeo-Latin American literature, Mexican literature, theater, and performance, Latin American modernismo, colonial and transatlantic discourses, Central American transnational cultures, U.S. Latinidades, Caribbean-Archipelagic poetics/politics, salsa and sabor, Brazilian cinema, Lusophone Africa and African diaspora studies, deconstruction of the Cuban Revolution, and contemporary reinscriptions of the nineteenth century.
Faculty members in the area of Spanish literature are recognized for their work in the history of the Spanish language and philology from the Middle Ages to the present, Medieval historiography and women narratives, Golden Age poetics, Cervantes and Quevedo traditions, revisions of the Enlightenment, romanticism (journalism and costumbrismo) and realism (philosophical traditions), modern and postmodern narrative and poetics, as well as representations of the Spanish Civil War and exile, particularly in Latin America.
The Department is also at the forefront of Spanish Applied Linguistics, language teaching pedagogy, language teacher education, language use and identity, social and political issues in foreign language teaching and learning, instructional technology, learner variables and learning capacities and special needs, language for specific purposes, cross-cultural communication, and heritage language learning.
We seek to forge a strong dialogue between and within our areas of specialization pertaining to Latin America, Spain, and Portugal. To that end, we offer thorough instruction in the diverse, complex, and globalized literatures, cultures, and linguistics of the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking world. Our students not only develop the critical language skills to communicate in the target language but also gain an understanding of the cultures, politics, histories, and literatures of the communities and socio-cultural spaces of the Americas, Spain, and Portugal.
Our goal is to foster learning and thought, develop critical perspectives, and promote intellectual growth in our students. We teach across interdisciplinary fields such as literature, film, popular and visual culture, theatre, history, philosophy, critical theory, gender and queer studies, philology, and linguistics in different cultural and geographic contexts. We strive for the creation and discussion of new forms of knowledge and the effective engagement of our students and faculty with the world. We prepare students to become promising professionals in their chosen careers.
Our M.A. and Ph.D. graduates are mentored by our faculty, engage in substantive research projects, and benefit from rigorous training in the teaching skills required by the profession. They are prepared to meet the professional demands of highly competitive academic positions in the United States and Latin America.