Graduate Program
Overview
The Graduate Program provides excellent opportunities to pursue research in the French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Latin American literature. Faculty members in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures work closely with graduate students on a broad spectrum of periods, genres, and interdisciplinary concentrations, leading to both MA and PhD degrees. In small seminars, our students engage in discussions of contemporary theory and criticism as they study the literary and cultural productions of France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and the Americas. The quality and scope of our program, with its many opportunities for collaboration and co-teaching, enables us to provide a diverse range of course offerings that nurtures and enriches the particular interests of graduate students, who work one-on-one with faculty within their specialty, as well as associate and affiliated faculty from other disciplines. The Department has a history of attracting imminent visiting professors, and can provide, in addition to fellowships and grants, travel support along with a variety of opportunities to study abroad. Students who receive fellowships are initially funded as "lectors", who lead weekly discussion sessions, and only later take on teaching or research assistantships. This enables them to maintain a greater focus on their course work, while at the same time gaining a high degree of professional experience.
Our students benefit from the University of Chicago's unparalleled tradition of multidisciplinary centers, programs and seminars. Graduate students in Romance Languages regularly participate with faculty in a wide array of workshops, including Anthropology of Latin America and the Caribbean, European and American Avant-Gardes; Gay and Lesbian Studies; Gender and Society; Latin American History; Mass Culture; Medieval Studies; Modern France; Poetics Workshop; Renaissance Workshop; Theater: Text, Society, and Racial Ideologies Workshop, among others. The recently established Western Mediterranean Culture Workshop is sponsored by the Department. Our students successfully compete for national and international fellowships, and have received tenure-track appointments at such institutions as Wesleyan University, The University of Pennsylvania, The University of Colorado, The University of Oregon, The State University of New York at Buffalo, Syracuse University, and Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand), and other excellent colleges and universities.
The city of Chicago offers world-class resources for scholars, such as the Newberry Library and Art Institute of Chicago, not to mention year-round music, theater, and cultural venues. Our Department is located in historic Wieboldt Hall, less than ten miles from downtown Chicago, and just a short walk from the David and Albert Smart Museum of Art, the renowned Oriental Institute, and the Joseph Regenstein Research Library with its vast collection of circulation and reference materials, periodicals, microforms, and rare books.