Romance Languages and Literatures has world-class, award-winning faculty who publish extensively on the cultures of the French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish-speaking worlds. In addition, our faculty teach classes in culture and language long popular with undergraduates anticipating a global dimension to their future careers or interested in international travel. All of our courses focus how engaged world citizens may navigate identities, communities, traditions, and many other topics of critical importance today.
We offer majors and minors in French, Italian, and Spanish, a composite major in Romance Languages, and courses in introductory Portuguese. With this training, our graduates go on to careers in fields that include medicine, business, law, education, foreign service, social work and advocacy with the advantage over their peers that comes from a deep understanding and command of languages and cultures. Our PhD programs in French and Hispanic Studies prepare our students for careers in academia and beyond: the research skills they impart provide an intellectual formation second to none.
Our alumni go on to do amazing things. Our undergraduate programs prepare students to follow their dreams in careers around the globe, in diverse industries from finance to consulting, government to academia. Graduate students from our department go on to great careers as well, with successful placements in academia, or careers tied to cultures around the world.
Alumni ProfilesDuring my time at WashU, the guidance of the professors in Romance Languages and Literatures was invaluable. The core seminars on literary and cultural theory and those on how to write proficiently and navigate the nuances of academia set the groundwork for me to develop myself as a productive and engaged academic.
―Iván Aguirre Darancou Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies, University of California, Riverside
