Foreign Languages & Literatures (Graduate Program)

Degree Programs

For information regarding the UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAM, click here.

Program Overview

Graduate study in Spanish has a long and distinguished tradition at LSU. The MA in Hispanic Studies, redesigned in 2004, offers the choice of a specialization in literary, linguistics, or cultural studies. Each specialization is offered with the thesis and non-thesis option and requires six hours of coursework in each of the other two areas. The program is supported by a faculty that represents diverse areas of the Hispanic world and that is particularly strong in interdisciplinary approaches to the study of language, literature, and culture. It also allows students the opportunity to take approved courses related to the Hispanic world taught by affiliated faculty in other departments.

Students pursuing the thesis option must complete a minimum of 30 credit hours in coursework and 6 credit hours in thesis research: at least 18 credit hours of coursework must be at the 7000-level.

Students pursuing the non-thesis (or comprehensive exam) option must complete a minimum of 36 credit hours in coursework: at least 21 credit hours of coursework must be at the 7000-level.

Specific course requirements:

SPAN 4400 Introduction to Hispanic Cultural Studies (required for all students)

SPAN 4603 Applied Spanish Linguistics (required for all Teaching Assistants)

SPAN 7990 Special Topics in Hispanic Criticism (required for specialization in literature or cultural studies)

SPAN 7985 Research in Hispanic Linguistics (required for specialization in linguistics)

Administration

John Pizer, Chair
Jeremy King, Associate Chair, Director of Hispanic Studies, Spanish Section Head
Rafael Orozco, Graduate Advisor
TELEPHONE	225-578-6616
FAX	225-578-5074
WEBSITE	http://www.lsu.edu/hss/fll/spanish/graduate/general-info.php

Admission

Applications and supporting materials for all graduate study must be submitted through the online application site for the LSU Graduate School. Official transcripts, official test scores, and other materials that come from third-party sources must be mailed to: Graduate Student Services, 114 West David Boyd Hall, Baton Rouge, LA 70803. These paper documents are stored electronically and departments have access to all materials submitted by and/or on behalf of a student applying to graduate study.

Applicants are expected to have a significant undergraduate background in Spanish, an above-average record on all undergraduate coursework, acceptable GRE scores, and strongly supportive recommendations from at least three faculty members familiar with their academic work.

Financial Assistance

Information on graduate assistantships and other forms of financial assistance is available from the graduate advisor.

Graduate Faculty

(check current listings by department by clicking this link)

Graduate Faculty who teach in Hispanic Studies

Elena Castro (M) • Twentieth and twenty-first century Spanish Peninsular Poetry and Poetics, gender and sexuality, women studies. Twentieth and twenty-first century Spanish Peninsular Literatures, Cultural Studies and

Interdisciplinary approaches to Hispanic Literatures. Contemporary Latin American Poetry and Poetics

Alejandro Cortazar (3A) • Mexican literature and culture; 19th century Latin American literature; gender, identity, and nationstate formation in 20th century Latin America

Dorian Dorado (6A) • Second Language Acquisition and Pedagogy, Language Variation Christian Fernández-Palacios (M) • Colonial Latin American studies, Latin American narratives, literary theory, postcolonial studies, transcontinental studies

Dorota Heneghan (M) • Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Spanish Literature and Culture, Interdisciplinary

Approaches to Modern Spanish Culture, Comparative Literature, Women and Gender Studies, Transatlantic Studies, Art History

Jeremy King (M) • Hispanic linguistics, pragmatics, historical Spanish, applied linguistics, second language

Laura Martins (7M) • Southern Cone literature and film, Transatlantic studies, Luis Buñuel’s films, art and violence, film theory, literary theory, genre studies, photography

Carmela Mattza (6A) • Visual Arts, History of the Emotions and Literature in Early Modern Iberia. Translation,

Reception and Influence of the Classics in Late Medieval and Early Modern Iberia. Presence and influence of Late Medieval Hagiography and Religious Iconography in the Court of the Spanish Hapsburg. Transatlantic Perspectives to the Use of Ekphrasis and Mythography in Cervantes’s Works and the Spanish Golden Age Comedia

Andrea Morris (M) • 20th-21st century literature and culture of the Hispanic Caribbean, Afro-Hispanic literature, Cuban film, Migration and Caribbean Diaspora

Rafael Orozco (M) • Spanish in the United States, Latin American Spanish, Sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, bilingualism, Colombian Spanish

The following is a list of graduate faculty in other departments who teach courses in the Hispanic Studies cultural studies concentration:

Stephen Andes (6A) • (Department of History) Latin America, esp. Mexico; 19th and 20th century Catholic social and political movements; Vatican policy; Modern Christianity; Christian Democratic parties; Religion and Revolution in Latin America; Liberation Theology; Religion and Narco-violence in Mexico

Mary Jill Brody (M) • (Department of Geography and Anthropology) Anthropological linguistics, Mayan linguistics, language and culture, discourse analysis

David Chicoine (M) • (Department of Geography and Anthropology) Andean archaeology, Coastal Peru, early urbanism, material culture

Paul E. Hoffman (EM) • (Department of History) Colonial Latin America, borderlands, Spain

Kent Mathewson (M) • (Department of Geography and Anthropology) Latin American cultural and historical geography, geography and environmental concerns in Latin America, indigenous peoples and Latin American geography

Heather McKillop (M) • (Department of Geography and Anthropology) Pre-Columbian archaeology, Mesoamerican archaeology, trade methods

Solimar Otero (7M) • (Department of English) gender, sexuality, Afro-Caribbean spirituality, and Yoruba traditional religion in folklore, literature and ethnography

Irina Shport (6A) • (Department of English) speech perception and production, second language acquisition and pedagogy, individual differences in language learning, phonetics and phonology, prosody

Elena FitzPatrick Sifford (6A) • (School of Art) Renaissance and Baroque art, Christian devotional sculpture in colonial Latin America

Andrew Sluyter (M) • (Department of Geography and Anthropology) Landscapes of colonialism, Latin America, development and environmental policy

RECENT FACULTY PUBLICATIONS

A representative sample of faculty publications during recent years includes the following:

Elena Castro, Poesía lesbiana queer. Cuerpos y sujetos inadecuados. Barcelona: Editorial Icaria, 2014. Alejandro Cortazar, “El antihéroe de ‘necio quijotismo’ en Tomochic (1893) de Heriberto Frías”

Dorian Dorado, “Variation on copula choice: A Comparative Analysis on Advanced Second Language Learners from

Two Speech Communities”

Christian Fernández, Co-edited with Sara Castro-Klarén. Inca Garcilaso & Contemporary World-Making. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016.Dorota Heneghan, Striking Their Modern Pose: Fashion, Gender, and Modernity in Galdós, Pardo Bazán, and Picón

Jeremy King, “Power and indirectness in business correspondence: Petitions in Colonial Louisiana Spanish”

Laura Martins, “Per-verse Latin American Women Poets” In The Cambridge History of Latin American Women’s Literature

Carmela Mattza, “A Stage for Isabel de Borbón: From Paris to Aranjuez”  In Beyond Spain’s Borders: Women Players in Early Modern National Theaters Andrea Morris, “Tourists, Locals, and Migrants: Linked Mobilities in Short Fiction by Dominican Writer Aurora Arias” Graduate faculty who teach courses in interdepartmental graduate programs:

Paolo Chirumbolo (M) • Modern and contemporary Italian literature, Cinema Studies, Literary Theory, Cultural Studies Irene S. Di Maio (EM)

Kristopher Fletcher (M) • Augustan Poetry, Greek and Roman Epic, Hellenistic Poetry, Mythology and Mythography Gundela Hachmann (6A) • Intermediality and contemporary German literature.

Touria Kannous (M) • Literature and film from the Maghreb; women’s movements in the Middle East and North Africa; postcolonial studies, cultural studies and Black diaspora studies

Qiancheng Li (M) • Premodern Chinese literature, comparative literature

Wilfred E. Major (M) • Greek and Roman Comedy, Greek Pedagogy, Greek Rhetorical Theory

John D. Pizer (M) • 18th-21st Century German Literature and Thought, Comparative Literature, Theory and Practice of World Literature

Mark S. Wagner (M) • Classical Arabic literature, Arabic vernacular literature, Islamic law, Muslim-Jewish relations Gang Zhou (M) • Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Comparative Literature

RECENT FACULTY PUBLICATIONS

A representative sample of faculty publications during recent years includes the following:

Paolo Chirumbolo, Tra coscienza e autocoscienza. Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli, 2009. Paolo Chirumbolo (coeditor).

Neoavanguardia. Italian Experimental Literature and Arts in 1960s

Kristopher Fletcher, Finding Italy: Travel, Nation, and Colonization in Vergil’s Aeneid (University of Michigan Press, 2014)

Touria Khannous, “Islam, Gender, and Identity in Leila Abouzeid’s The Last Chapter: A Postcolonial Critique”

Quancheng Li, Fictions of Enlightenment: Journey to the West, Tower of Myriad Mirrors, and Dream of the Red Chamber

Wilfred Major, “Aristophanes and Alazoneia: Laughing at the Parabasis of Clouds.”

John Pizer, The Idea of World Literature: History and Pedagogical Practice

Mark S. Wagner, Like Joseph in Beauty: Yemeni Vernacular Poetry and Arab-Jewish Symbiosis

Richard Warga, “Three Fragments from the Berkeley Collection”

Gang Zhou, Placing the Modern Chinese Vernacular in Transnational Literature (2011)

Programs

Master of Arts

Hispanic Studies, M.A.

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