Introduction: Undergraduate Program

Welcome to our Undergraduate Program!

 The Department offers instructions in the Spanish and Portuguese languages and in Hispanic and Lusophone literature and culture.  All of our courses are taught in Spanish and Portuguese, and classes are small so that students at all levels are given maximum opportunity to improve their linguistic skills. 
Incoming students are required to take our on-line Spanish Language Placement Exam to help ensure that this development of linguistic skills starts at the appropriate level.

Along with the standard range of Spanish and Portuguese language courses, the Department offers a variety of culture courses that deal with a wide range of topics, including film, theater, literature, linguistics, music, etc. 
The following list of recent courses is representative of the diversity of topics you can study in our Undergraduate Program:
- “Matza and Tortillas: Jewish Literature and Culture of the Hispanic World”
- “The Renaissance and Baroque: Architecture, Literature and the Body”
- “Spanish Phonetics and Dialectology”
- “Mexico – US Frontera and its Stories”
-  “Theories and Histories of Hispanic Theater, Film, and Performance”
- “Mapping Out Differences:  Race and Gender in Brazil and Portugal”
- “Madrid, Barcelona, New York”
- “Cuban Revolution: Past/Present/Future”
- “‘Rocanrol’ and Politics,”
- “Afro-Caribbean Religions in the Literature of the Caribbean”
- “Translation: Theory and Practice”.

For all the students interested in majoring in Spanish, these are the learning goals of our Major Program:

1. Apply fundamental critical reading skills to the analysis and interpretation of a variety of styles and genres from a range of texts in Spanish, such as novels, poetry, essay, film, and journalistic writing
2. Produce written communications in academic Spanish
3. Use spoken Spanish in an academic setting in formal communicative modes, such as presentational, interpretative, interpersonal
4. Carry out and report on research related to the production and reception of primary and secondary texts arising in and about Hispanic communities, such as the Iberian Peninsula and the Americas.