PHD, Romance Languages

Degree Program Summary:

The Department of Romance Languages offers graduate programs in French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Hispanic Linguistics leading to Master of Arts degrees in Spanish or Romance Languages and to the Doctoral degree in Romance Languages. Students choose an emphasis in literature or in linguistics and may study one language or a combination of languages. We are a dynamic and collaborative interdisciplinary department that favors a contextualized and integrated approach to the study of language, literature, and culture. We prepare our students to enter the profession as both teachers and scholars. Our students have won competitive assistantships, awards, fellowships, and scholarships and go on to productive careers as teachers and researchers at secondary and university levels. For further information regarding programs, courses, faculty, students, requirements for the MA and PhD degrees, as well as our graduate handbook and more, please visit our website. Application deadline is January 1.

The PhD is offered in Romance Languages with a specialization in French, Italian, Portuguese, or Spanish literatures, or Hispanic Linguistics. Romance Languages faculty members specialize in Italian literature, Brazilian and Portuguese literatures, French and Francophone literatures, French linguistics, Spanish and Latin American literatures, and Hispanic Linguistics including applied linguistics, discourse analysis, historical linguistics, second language acquisition, pragmatics, semantics, and sociolinguistics. Students are guided through the program by their faculty advisor and PhD students are typically awarded departmental teaching assistantships for the 5 years required to complete the degree. A teaching assistantship offers a full tuition waiver and a stipend. Out of state tuition waivers are also available for graduate students not holding an assistantship.

Requirements for the degree: 12 graduate courses: 8-9 in the major field of study and 3-4 in a minor field of study in Romance Languages or another department. Students who are combining the study of two languages will take a minimum of 6 courses in the major language, a minimum of 3 courses in the minor language, and 3 additional courses to be applied to the major language, the minor language, a minor field, or any combination of these. Additional requirements include written preliminary examinations and oral defense of the examinations, 3 credit hours for the dissertation requirement, and a final oral defense of the dissertation.

With the approval of the student’s advisory committee, a student’s program of study may include some graduate courses outside the major or minor fields. Reading knowledge of one foreign language (exclusive of the major language and English) is required. 16 credit hours must be taken at the 8000 level.