Why Spanish & Portuguese Studies?

Founded in the 1960s, the Department of Spanish & Portuguese Studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is widely recognized as a pioneer in the interdisciplinary study of language, literature and more broadly, cultural expressions grounded in theorized and socio-historical perspectives.

We offer BA degrees in Spanish and Spanish and Portuguese Studies and MA and PhD degrees with emphases in Hispanic literatures and cultures, Hispanic linguistics, and Lusophone literatures and cultures. Our faculty have strengths in the colonial, postcolonial, and globalization triad; feminist, gender, and sexuality studies; memory and witnessing; human rights; subaltern studies; law and literature; cultural contacts; and the Hispanic legacies of Hebrew and Arabic traditions. In linguistics, our strengths are in the study of language in its context(s) with a focus on interdisciplinary approaches to language contact, phonology, pragmatics, second language acquisition, sociolinguistics, and syntax.