Foreign Languages & Literatures (Graduate Program)

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

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

Administration

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: LSU Office of Graduate Admissions, 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 faculty listings by department here)

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

Graduate Faculty in other departments who teach courses in the Hispanic Studies Graduate Program:

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

Professorial faculty who teach in Foreign Languages and Literatures

Emily Batinsky, Latin Elegy and Epic, Seneca’s Prose Works
Paolo Chirumbolo (M) • Modern and Contemporary Italian Literature, Cinema Studies, Literary Theory, Cultural Studies
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 Ctudies 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 HISPANIC STUDIES GRADUATE FACULTY PUBLICATIONS

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” Perfiles del heroísmo en la literatura hispánica de entresiglos (XIX-XX). Luis Álvarez Castro y Denise DuPont, Eds. Valladolid: Editorial Verdelís, 2013, 107-119.
Dorian Dorado, Variation on copula choice: A comparative analysis on advanced second language learners from two speech communities  Doctoral dissertation, University of Florida, 2011.
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. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2015.
Jeremy King, Language Variation and Contact-Induced Change: Spanish across Space and Time. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2018.
Laura Martins, “Per-verse Latin American Women Poets”. The Cambridge History of Latin American Women’s Literature. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015, 504-525.
Carmela Mattza, Hacia La vida es sueño como speculum reginae: Isabel de Borbón en la corte de Felipe IV. Madrid: Verbum Editorial, 2017.
Andrea Morris, “Cuban Post-soviet Return and Race in Films by Leonardo Guevara Navarro: Sustaining Transnational Community and Belonging.” Afro-Hispanic Review 36.1 (2017).
Rafael Orozco, Spanish in Colombia and New York City: Language Contact Meets Dialectal Convergence. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2018.

FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES PROFESSORIAL FACULTY PUBLICATIONS

Emily Batinski, “In Cynthiam / Pro Cynthia (Propertius 2,32)”. Latomus. 62, no. 3 (2003): 616-626.
Paolo Chirumbolo, Tra coscienza e autocoscienza saggi sulla narrativa degli anni Sessanta : Volponi, Calvino, Sanguineti. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2009.
Kristopher Fletcher, Finding Italy: Travel, Nation, and Colonization in Vergil’s Aeneid. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2014.
Gundela Hachmann, Zeit und Technoimagination. Eine neue Einbildungskraft in Romanen des 21. Jahrhundert. Wuerzburg, Germany: Koenigshausen und Neumann, 2015.
Touria Khannous, “Islam, Gender, and Identity in Leila Abouzeid’s The Last Chapter: A Postcolonial Critique.” College Literature 37, no. 1 (2010): 174-189.
Quancheng Li, Fictions of Enlightenment: Journey to the West, Tower of Myriad Mirrors, and Dream of the Red Chamber. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004
Wilfred Major, The Court of Comedy: Aristophanes, Rhetoric and Democracy in Fifth-Century Athens. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2013.
John Pizer, Imagining the Age of Goethe in German Literature, 1970-2010. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2011.
Mark S. Wagner, Like Joseph in Beauty: Yemeni Vernacular Poetry and Arab-Jewish Symbiosis. Leiden: Brill, 2009.
Richard Warga,  “Three Fragments from the Berkeley Collection.” Illinois Classical Studies 27/28 (2002): 109-13.
Gang Zhou, Placing the Modern Chinese Vernacular in Transnational Literature. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

Programs

• Hispanic Studies, M.A.