PhD in Spanish Language and Literature in College Park United States | University of Maryland, College Park

The Department of Spanish and Portuguese's faculty excels in teaching, mentorship, and groundbreaking research that defines a leading academic program. Our reputation stems from exploring connections among language, literature, culture, and politics, our community involvement, and our specialized MA program in Hispanic Applied Linguistics. We connect diverse intellectual spheres across Spain, Spanish America, and the Americas while reexamining cultural uniqueness. The Department has hosted prominent literary figures like Juan Ramon Jimenez, who taught here from 1943 to 1951 and later won the 1956 Nobel Prize in Literature following our nomination. The enduring influence of Jimenez, along with cultural theorist Angel Rama, celebrated poet Jose Emilio Pacheco, distinguished writer and Professor Emeritus Jorge Aguilar Mora, and Professor Emerita Graciela Palau de Nemes, among others, continues to guide our intellectual direction.

Our Department is celebrated for its interdisciplinary expertise in Latin American and Lusophone studies, with faculty research spanning intellectual history, Southern Cone literature, Judeo-Latin American writing, Mexican literature, theater and performance studies, Latin American modernismo, colonial and transatlantic studies, Central American transnational cultures, U.S. Latinx studies, Quechua language and indigenous literatures, Caribbean poetics and politics, salsa culture, Brazilian cinema, Lusophone African and diaspora studies, critical analyses of the Cuban Revolution, and modern reinterpretations of 19th-century themes. Our Spanish literature scholars are acclaimed for their work in linguistic history and philology from medieval times to today, medieval women's narratives, Golden Age poetry, Cervantes and Quevedo scholarship, Enlightenment re-examinations, romanticism (including journalism and costumbrismo) and realism (philosophical approaches), modernist and postmodern narratives, and depictions of the Spanish Civil War and its diaspora, particularly in Latin America.