Department of Romance Studies (GRAD)

• French and Francophone Studies
• Italian Studies
• Literatures, Languages, and Cultures of the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America

We also offer a dual-track MA to PhD option in Hispanic Linguistics. For this program, students need to apply to both the Department of Romance Studies and the Department of Linguistics separately and are admitted jointly. Students who already possess an MA in a related field of study may apply directly to the Hispanic Linguistics PhD track. 

Research Facilities

The Walter Royal Davis and Wilson Libraries' Spanish, French, and Italian collections rank among the best in the nation. The Spanish and Spanish American collections are particularly strong in Early Modern, Colonial, and 19th- and 20th-century holdings. The French collection has similar strengths in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries and is enriched by the Charles Nodier and René Char materials. The Italian collection exhibits strength in the 19th century. These strengths are enhanced by extensive holdings in reference, specialized journals, and rare books. Among the latter are a notable gathering of 20th-century first editions of French writers, a distinguished Spanish drama collection of more than 26,000 plays (many of them pre-1830 sueltas), and the Flatow Collection of Latin American Cronistas, consisting of early imprints of the Hispanization of the New World.

Courses

Numbered 400-999:

• Catalan (CATA)
• French (FREN)
• Italian (ITAL)
• Portuguese (PORT)
• Romance Languages (ROML)
• Spanish (SPAN)

For students applying to the doctoral program with the M.A. in hand, appropriate placement and course transfer will be determined on a case-by-case basis by the director of graduate studies in consultation with the graduate advisors. Depending on the program, the department may transfer up to nine courses (27 credits) into the Ph.D. program. Students transferring a total of six courses (18 credits) may have the second-year qualifying exams and the research paper (thesis substitute) requirements waived.

Following the faculty member's name is a section number that students should use when registering for independent studies, reading, research, and thesis and dissertation courses with that particular professor.

Professors

French

Hassan Melehy (64), Early Modern French and Comparative Literature, Contemporary Critical Theory, Film, Franco-American Literature
Ellen R. Welch (08), 17th- and 18th-Century French Literature and Culture, Theater and Performance Studies, Theater and Politics, Travel and Literature

Italian 

Serenella Iovino (15), Italian Literature and Culture, Comparative Literature, Environmental Humanities, Public Humanities and Literary Journalism, Animal Humanities, Biosemiotics, New Materialisms, Environmental Justice, Landscape Studies, Naturphilosophie and the Philosophical Novel in the Age of Goethe

Spanish

Lucia Binotti (47), Early Modern Cultural Studies, Sociohistorical Linguistics, Digital Humanities, Digital Pedagogy and Immersive Learning
Bruno Estigarribia (22), Spanish Syntax and Semantics; Indigenous Languages (Especially Guarani and Languages of the Amazon and Southern Italian Romance languages); Language Contact; Digital Methods in Linguistics; Qualitative and Quantitative Language Analysis; Corpus Linguistics and Language Documentation; Forensic Linguistics; First Language Acquisition
Veronica Garibotto (03), 19th- to 21st-Century Latin American Literary, Filmic, and Cultural Studies
Irene Gómez Castellano (13), 18th-21st Century Spanish Literature and Culture, Poetry and Visual Arts
Juan Carlos González Espitia (62), 18th- and 19th-Century Spanish American Literature; Contemporary Spanish American Literature; Discourses and Representations of Disease; Non-Canonical, Heterodox, Hidden Literatures; Nation-Building Discourses
Carmen Hsu (01), 16th- and 17th-Century Spanish Literature and Culture, Theater, Humanism, National/Cultural Identity, Literatures in North Europe, Asia, and Africa

Associate Professors

French

Jessica Tanner (30), 19th-Century French Literature and Culture, the Novel, the History of Sexuality, Contemporary Critical Theory, Space and Place, Ecocriticism

Italian

Maggie Fritz-Morkin (44), Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch, the History of Rhetoric, Urban Studies, Medicine and Literature

Spanish

Rafael Acosta Morales (51), Political Theory, Latino Studies, Gender Studies, Comparative Literature and Mexican Studies 

Lamar Graham (25), Historical and Comparative Romance Linguistics (Particularly within Ibero-Romance), Generative Approaches to Phonological and Morphosyntactic Change, Sociolinguistic and Sociopragmatic Variation, Corpus Linguistics

Assistant Professors

French

Erika Serrato (45), Francophone Caribbean Literature and Culture, Indigeneity, Postcolonial Theory, Memory and Trauma Studies, Literature of Exile
Sean Singh Matharoo (46), 20th- and 21st-Century French and Francophone Speculative Literature, Media, and Philosophy, Postcolonial Theory, the Energy Humanities, Performance Studies

Italian

Danila Cannamela (39), Avant-Garde Poetics, Niche Genres, 1970s Counterculture, and Gender Liberation Movements

Spanish

Adam Cohn (38), Modern Iberian Literature, Jewish Studies, Hispanic Jewish Writing

Professors Emeriti

Cesáreo Bandera
Dino Cervigni
Angel L. Cilveti
Yves de la Quérière
Frank Dominguez
Dominique Fisher
I.R. Stirling Haig II
Antonio Illiano
Larry D. King
Catherine A. Maley
Edward D. Montgomery
Rosa Perelmuter
Ennio Rao 
Monica P. Rector

Alicia Rivero
María A. Salgado
Carol Lynn Sherman