Welcome to the Department of Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese

at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

The Department of Romance Studies is housed in a major research university in the heart of one of the most thrilling cities in the world, Chicago.  The UIC campus prides itself in the diversity of its students, the strengths of its research programs, and its firm commitment to interdisciplinary studies. The Department of Romance Studies plays an important part in the College of Liberal Arts mission to provide a first-rate education to its diverse student population, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels.  Our faculty members are among the best in their fields of study and are committed to exposing students to the most current trends and sound research approaches in Hispanic Literary and Cultural Studies, Hispanic Linguistics, French Literary and Cultural Studies, and Italian Interdisciplinary Studies.  Reflecting our dedication to building programs that are both interdisciplinary and of high caliber, our faculty and students work closely with faculty members in Latin American and Latino Studies, African American Studies , Gender and Women’s Studies, Disability Studies, International Studies, English, the Graduate Program in Linguistics housed in English, Psychology, Philosophy, History, and Art History, among others. 

Through our course offerings we actively seek to build the language competency of our students, expose them to the complex linguistic, cultural, and theoretical issues that are most pertinent to language studies today, and prepare them for the professional field. Romance Studies presently offers a bachelor of arts in Spanish and French, a minor in Spanish, French, and Italian, a master of arts in Hispanic Literary and Cultural Studies, Hispanic Linguistics and French Literary and Cultural Studies, and doctoral degrees in Hispanic Literary and Cultural Studies and Hispanic Linguistics.  We are looking forward in the academic year 2009-2010 to adding to our offerings a bachelor of arts in Italian Interdisciplinary Studies and a master of arts in teaching in Spanish. We invite you to explore this website to discover the exciting offerings that await you in the study of Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese.

Welcome to Interdisciplinary Connections

Aside from their specific fields of research, the scholars in our unit display a broad profile of expertise in transnational studies, investigating the linguistic, literary, artistic, social and political dimensions of cultural identity. These investigations take two forms—on the one hand, specifying our objects of study in a concrete culture and history; and on the other hand, locating it within interdisciplinary and comparative contexts. This commitment to interdisciplinarity and transnationalism is not a commitment in name only. Indeed, most of our faculty have zero-time or joint appointments with units across campus, and colleagues in other disciplines also have appointments in SIP. As one might expect, some of the most frequent and fruitful collaborations are with the Program in Gender & Women’s Studies, theUnit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, the Department of Linguistics, the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, the Latina/Latino Studies Program, Second Language Acquisition and Teacher Education (SLATE), the Unit for Cinema Studies, the Program in Comparative and World Literature, the Program in Art History and the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities. Recently, the necessity and intellectual utility of this kind of cross-departmental connection has been confirmed as the entire Foreign Languages Building has been incorporated into a School of Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics in order to facilitate precisely these kinds of interdisciplinary investigations.

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