The incomparable beauty of medieval France: the chateau at Gien evokes the solemn grandeur of an earlier age.

The remote solemnity of this Portuguese church evokes through its simple architecture an enduring natural beauty.

Toledo, the city where Spain’s three great religions (Christian, Jewish, Muslim) intermingled to produce an abundant richness of culture.

A great river flows through it: the Tiber juxtaposes monuments from Rome’s imperial past with its Catholic present.

One of Latin America’s storied cities, Havana, Cuba bears the marks of Caribbean culture from colonial times to the present.

Overview of Programs

RLL offers vibrant programs in French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. Our language classes have long been popular with undergraduates, including those interested in international travel and those who anticipate a global dimension to their future careers. All of our classes focus on culture writ large: we study great texts, and we do so with an eye to gender roles, traditions, communities, individual freedom, social obligations, and many other topics of critical importance today. We offer concentrations in French, Italian, and Spanish, as well as a composite major in Romance Languages, and courses in introductory Portuguese. Our Ph.D. programs in French and Spanish are comprehensive and designed to prepare careers in academia, with a focus on research and teaching. ...read more

2017 Mid-America Conference on Hispanic Literatures

The Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Washington University in St. Louis will be hosting the 2017 Mid-America Conference on Hispanic Literatures (MACHL) taking place in October 26-28, 2017 at the Clayton Plaza Hotel. The theme for the conference is “New Cartographies in Iberian and Latin American Studies” and the keynote speakers are Prof. Bruno Bosteels (Columbia University) and Prof. Susan Martin-Márquez (Rutgers University).
June 3, 2016

WELCOME TO NEW COLLEAGUES

This fall we welcome five new colleagues to the department, three in French and two in Spanish.

Our new French colleagues are:

Stève Levillain, lecturer. A French native, Stève completed his PhD at the University of Iowa this past spring. He wrote his dissertation on urban landscapes in French popular literature from the late nineteenth century until the present day, with particular focus on their changing inhabitants, from the French working classes to North African immigrants. Steve comes to WashU with extensive teaching experience and won an Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award at Iowa in 2014...

Apr
24
Italian Students
McMillan Cafe @ 10:15am
Apr
28
Lab Sciences 300 @ 4:00pm
Apr
30
various speakers
Danforth University Center Room 276 @ 3:00pm