The Department of Romance Languages and Literatures offers PhD programs in French Language and Literature and in Hispanic Studies, preparing students for careers in university teaching and research as well as for diverse career options in areas that include higher education administration, libraries and special collections, and humanities and arts organizations. With our faculty's wide-ranging expertise, graduate students have opportunities to specialize in many areas of French, Francophone, Latin American, and Iberian cultures. We offer a broad range of study from medieval through contemporary, with opportunities to concentrate in a variety of different areas that reflect the areas of expertise of our faculty, including migrations and communities; popular literacy and cultural memory; early modern and modern cultural production; the intersections of literature, art, and the sciences; modernities and postmodernities; visual cultures and performance; and linguistics and language learning. The department also offers the Graduate Certificate in Language Instruction, which is open to PhD students in other disciplines as well as to those in the department's own graduate programs.
Students in both programs will be funded for up to six years, the expected program length.
Contact Information
For information about the combined degrees — the PhD in French & Comparative Literature and the PhD in Hispanic Studies & Comparative Literature — consult the Comparative Literature program page of this Bulletin.
Chair
Endowed Professors
Mabel Moraña
William H. Gass Professor in Arts & Sciences; Director of Latin American Studies Program
PhD, University of Minnesota
Professors
William Acree
Professor of Spanish
PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Joe Barcroft
Professor of Spanish and Applied Linguistics
PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
J. Andrew Brown
Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature
PhD, University of Virginia
Stephanie Kirk
Associate Professor of Spanish
PhD, New York University
Ignacio Sánchez-Prado
Jarvis Thurston and Mona Van Duyn Professor in the Humanities
Professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies
PhD, University of Pittsburgh
Harriet A. Stone
Professor of French and Comparative Literature
PhD, Brown University
Associate Professors
Seth Graebner
Associate Professor of French
PhD, Harvard University
Ignacio Infante
Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Spanish
PhD, Rutgers University
Eloísa Palafox
Associate Professor of Spanish
PhD, Michigan State University
Assistant Professors
Professors Emerita
Nina Cox Davis
Associate Professor of Spanish
PhD, Johns Hopkins University
Elyane Dezon-Jones
Professor of French
Doctorat de 3e Cycle, University of Paris
Professors Emeriti
Stamos Metzidakis
Professor of French and Comparative Literature
PhD, Columbia University
Michel Rybalka
Professor of French
PhD, University of California, Los Angeles
Joseph Schraibman
Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures
PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Students in the Hispanic Studies PhD program take a required seminar in language teaching methodology in addition to the requirements specified below. Students in French complete a language teaching practicum. Optional pedagogical or interdisciplinary study can be acquired by means of one of the graduate certificate programs in Arts & Sciences.
PhD in French Language and Literature
Students in the PhD in French Language and Literature program take courses in all areas of French and Francophone studies, as well as a number of courses in a related secondary field of their choice, for a total of 60 credits at the graduate level. During their third semester, students take the AM exam. During the semester after they finish their courses, students take the PhD exam, for which they submit proposed syllabi for a two-semester sequence of undergraduate literature courses and two qualifying papers (potentially publishable articles of 25 pages, revised from seminar papers in two different periods). An oral exam by the entire faculty, based on these submissions, will follow. Students further defend their dissertation prospectuses before their thesis committees of three faculty members. They then have approximately two years to complete the research and writing of their dissertations, which they defend during the last semester of their programs.
PhD in Hispanic Studies
Students in the PhD in Hispanic Studies program take courses in all areas of Latin American and Iberian studies. During the fifth semester, students take comprehensive exams from among the three options offered them. After passing their comprehensive exams, students submit and defend a dissertation prospectus. Students then research, write, defend, and submit their doctoral dissertation. Details of the program stages and requirements are available on the Hispanic Studies Graduate Programs page of the Romance Languages and Literatures website.
Graduate Certificate in Language Instruction
To provide our graduate students with additional qualifications and formal development that will make them strongly prepared for a range of demanding academic positions, the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures offers the Graduate Certificate in Language Instruction for students enrolled in PhD programs at Washington University.
The Graduate Certificate in Language Instruction is an interdisciplinary certificate related to the fields of applied linguistics, second-language acquisition, psychology, neuroscience and other disciplines that have important implications for the way that foreign languages are taught. Study within these different fields provides a fascinating examination of how second languages are learned and how the second language is generated by learners. An understanding of second-language acquisition processes both enriches our knowledge of how the mind works and serves to better inform the ways that foreign-language teachers design and implement curricular approaches for different levels and skills.
PhD students must apply to be considered for the certificate program at the beginning of their doctoral courses. Applications will be evaluated by a faculty committee twice a year, in October and March. The certificate consists of five courses: three required courses and two electives.
The goal of the five-course sequence is to provide certificate students with a solid base in the theoretical and instructional implications of research on language acquisition across different linguistic subsystems (i.e., phonology, lexis, syntax and pragmatics) and different linguistic modalities (i.e., spoken and written). This formation will also prepare students to be involved in language program design and curricular development.
For more information, visit the Graduate Certificate in Language Instruction page, contact Professor Joe Barcroft, or call 314-935-5175.