The Graduate Program in Literatures, Languages, and Cultures of the Iberian Peninsula and the Americas aims to equip scholars, researchers, and teachers with the necessary skills to analyze the literary, linguistic, and cultural production associated with these regions of the world. The Ph.D. program allows specialization in the literature and culture originating in either continent, or, if a transatlantic approach is selected, a combination of both. Regardless of specialization, all students will be trained globally, since for their written examination they will be required to address both regions. The goal is to perceive the Iberian Peninsula and the Americas not as separate entities to be studied in isolation, but as interconnected and interdependent regions whose cultural discourses reveal deep relationships when studied in unison.
The graduate faculty brings to bear a broad array of interdisciplinary interests and competencies, from historical, literary, linguistic, social, and cultural emphases to film and visual studies. Graduate students will engage in research and coursework that, while departing from the millenarian roots of the Iberian Peninsula and the Americas, may consider, among other topics, East-West transatlantic and transcontinental discourses that have taken place among Spain, Portugal, the Americas, Africa, and Asia, or North-South literary and cultural dialogues between the Iberian Peninsula and Africa, and within the Americas. Students may also build their programs of study to include diasporic exchanges (that is, those occurring in countries where people of Hispanic descent have settled) or the literatures, languages and cultures of other groups in these regions (those speaking indigenous, African or Portuguese Languages in the Americas, or Portuguese, Catalan, Basque, or Galician in the Iberian Peninsula). In addition, students acquire a solid knowledge of literary criticism and theory, and may also include film and visual studies in their areas of preparation.