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Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Admissions

Applying to the Program

The program is not currently accepting applications.

Program Overview

The graduate program of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese offers coursework and research supervision in all areas of Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian literature, with related courses in linguistics, film and cultural studies, and theory. The department has close ties to a number of other departments, as well as the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies, the Department of Gender and Sexuality Studies, the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, the Center for Second Language Studies, the Center for Teaching, and the Brazilian Studies Association (BRASA). The graduate faculty has a strong tradition of scholarly research. In 2007, the Faculty Productivity Index ranked us as the number one most productive graduate program in the country in our field. In 2010, the National Research Council placed us in the top 6 U.S. Ph.D. programs in research.

The program accepts only students intending to pursue a doctorate. Two Ph.D. degrees are offered; Spanish, and a combined degree in Spanish and Portuguese. While pursuing doctoral studies, all students will earn an M.A. from Vanderbilt, either in Spanish or in Spanish and Portuguese, regardless of other M.A. degrees earned elsewhere.

The faculty takes great pride in their efforts to create a rigorous and nurturing educational experience for their graduate students:

  • A better than 2:1 student-faculty ratio with a superb research faculty
  • A flexible curriculum tailored to each student’s interests and background
  • Opportunities for interdisciplinary work, including graduate certificates in Latino and Latina Studies, Latin American Studies, and Gender and Sexuality Studies
  • A comprehensive system of mentoring and advising from the first day through the search for academic employment
  • A strong placement record
  • Two scholarly journals