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

The Department of Spanish and Portuguese's faculty is dedicated to outstanding teaching and mentorship, while also generating innovative research that defines a leading academic department. 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 domains spanning Spain, Spanish America, and regions from North to South America, including the Caribbean and Brazil, as we re-examine cultural distinctiveness. The Department has hosted prominent Latin American and Spanish literary figures such as 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 author and Professor Emeritus Jorge Aguilar Mora, and Professor Emerita Graciela Palau de Nemes, among others, continues to guide our intellectual direction and purpose.

Our Department is celebrated for its interdisciplinary expertise in Latin American and Lusophone literary and cultural studies, with faculty research spanning intellectual history, Southern Cone literature, Judeo-Latin American writing, Mexican literature, theater and performance studies, Latin American modernism, colonial and transatlantic studies, Central American transnational cultures, U.S. Latinx studies, Quechua language and indigenous literatures, Caribbean political poetics, salsa culture, Brazilian film, Lusophone African and diaspora studies, critical analyses of the Cuban Revolution, and contemporary reinterpretations of 19th-century themes. Scholars specializing in Spanish literature are acknowledged for their contributions to linguistic history and philology from medieval times to modernity, medieval women's narratives, Golden Age poetry, Cervantes and Quevedo scholarship, Enlightenment reinterpretations, romantic journalism and costumbrismo, realist philosophical traditions, modern and postmodern narrative forms, and representations of the Spanish Civil War and its diaspora, particularly in Latin America.