The Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign continues a long and distinguished tradition that makes it one of the premier Departments with comprehensive graduate programs in Spanish, Italian and Portuguese in the country.
The Department offers the Master of Arts (M.A.) and Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degrees in Spanish, Italian and Portuguese.
Besides courses in Spanish (SPAN), Italian (ITAL) and Portuguese (PORT), our Department's offerings include Catalan (CATL), Basque (BASQ) and Romance Linguistics (RMLN). You may find our courses in the Course Catalog under these six labels.
Specializations in our graduate programs include Spanish Linguistics, Romance Linguistics, Hispanic Literatures and Cultures, Italian Studies and Luso-Brazilian Studies.
Graduate students in our Department are encouraged to pursue interdisciplinary research. Some options open to our students to complement their PhD in Spanish, Italian or Portuguese are the Graduate Minor in Gender and Women's Studies, the Graduate Concentration in Medieval Studies the Graduate Certificate in SLATE (Second Language Acquisition and Teaching Education) and the Graduate Certificate in Translation Studies, among others.
Financial Aid:
Most of our graduate students are awarded Teaching Assistantships, which usually require teaching three courses (or 6 minisections) per year, plus a tuition waiver.
The current salary for the 2012-2013 academic year for a 50% appointment is $14,820. This financial aid includes a full waiver of tuition and service fee for the academic year and following summer, full waivers of the health service, AFMFA and Library fees, a partial payment toward the graduate student health insurance fee, and provides basic dental and vision coverage. Students are responsible for paying the remaining fees of approximately $500 per semester. The minimum total value of this financial aid package is approximately $50,000 for an out-of-state student. Pending satisfactory performance and academic progress and funds available to the department, the department, or its designate, will continue to provide financial support in the form of assistantships for a maximum of two years at the MA level and four years at the PhD level.
Potential students should keep in mind that cost of living in Urbana-Champaign is significantly lower than in the larger metropolitan areas where many similar institutions are located.
Other forms of financial support such as fellowships, awards, and research assistantships are also available.
Research:
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is home to one of the largest public libraries in the United States. Our library has excellent holdings in all areas relevant to research in the fields covered by our Department and possesses a large collection of rare books.
You may get a sense of the innovative research carried out in our Department by visiting our faculty members' individual web pages. Some of the main intellectual themes shared by several members of our faculty are listed on our research page.
Formal graduate courses are complemented by a series of workshops and talks.