Spanish is the most widely spoken language of the Americas, with 130 million speakers in North America alone, more than 400 million worldwide, and with growing numbers in Canada. It is the fourth most widely spoken language in the world, and it is the official language in 21 countries on three continents: Europe, Africa, and Latin America.

Spanish opens the door to the study of a rich range of cultural expressions in literature, film, and art, from medieval and early modern Transatlantic world, to the literary and cultural productions of contemporary Spanish and Spanish American societies. The department offers a wide selection of courses at the introductory (second year), intermediate (third year) and advanced (fourth year) level in literature, culture, and linguistics. Students are encouraged to complement and expand on the training they receive in these courses by taking courses in other academic units. By the time of their graduation, our students acquire skills to read analytically fictional and non-fictional, literary and visual texts. They thus gain a deep knowledge of Hispanic cultures, as well as the skills to reflect critically on the world in which they live.

Spanish also opens the door to the study of the Romance language family. The Department offers students the opportunity to advance their language skills through the systematic reflection on the language structure, from the sound system to the morphology and syntax. Through a variety of courses with a theoretical and experimental focus in linguistics, students acquire basic skills that can be transferred to teaching or research programs. Through collaboration with other language and linguistics programs, students are provided with opportunities and training to conduct research in linguistics with a focus on the Spanish language.

A degree in Spanish linguistics, literature, and culture opens up career paths both domestically and internationally. The skills that students acquire through the study of Spanish and of the Spanish-speaking world either prepare them directly for or are an asset in some of the following fields:

• media, journalism, marketing, public relations
• domestic government services and NGOs; foreign services and foreign affairs specialist; international development; political aid
• commerce, finances, tourism, and hospitality
• post-graduate studies and academic careers; cultural work
• editing, publishing, translation, education
• library and information sciences
• careers in the health profession, including medicine, speech pathology and audiology
• computational linguistics, speech recognition, and synthesis