For Prospective Graduate Students

Tulane University is home to one of the country's leading graduate programs in Spanish and Portuguese. Our faculty consists of nationally and internationally recognized scholars and teachers in the literatures and cultures of Spain, Portugal, Spanish America, Brazil, and Lusophone Africa, in addition to linguistics and second language acquisition. The Howard-Tilton Library contains extensive holdings that support our respective fields, including the Latin American Library, one of the largest collections of its kind in the United States. Tulane is also home to the Stone Center for Latin American Studies, which has been a generous source of research support for our graduate students. Making use of these resources, students pursue M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Spanish and Portuguese. Candidates for graduate study may apply for Teaching Assistantships which afford a stipend of $19,700 (AY 2008-09) in exchange for departmental teaching.

We encourage all prospective students to contact the Director of Graduate Studies, Kathleen Davis, for more information regarding our program. To apply to our program on-line, visit the designated page on the website of the School of Liberal Arts.

Program Information

Qualified students are invited to apply for one of our advanced degree programs. A detailed description of degree requirements and of program structure is available on request. Applications for Teaching Assistantships should be completed by February 1 and will be answered no later than mid-April. Applications must be accompanied by transcripts, letters of recommendation and GRE (Graduate Record Examination) scores. Foreign students must also take the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) exam.

You can obtain more information at the website of the School of Liberal Arts. Financial aid is offered each year as follows:

(1) A Teaching Assistantship for the academic year (subject to taxes), paid in 18 bi-weekly installments over nine months.

(2) A Tuition Scholarship to cover the cost of full-time graduate studies.

In return for financial aid, you will teach the equivalent of one course of elementary or intermediate Spanish each semester (5 to 6 hours of teaching per week). February 1 is the deadline for receipt of applications requesting financial aid.

In order to evaluate your application, we should have the necessary documentation from you as stated in the guidelines: transcripts, letters of recommendation, a statement of your future plans, and your scores on the GRE (Graduate Record Examination). Non-native speakers of English must also take the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language). Further down on this page you will find links to specific information about our M.A and Ph.D. programs. The departmental website also contains links to faculty members' home pages.

Our library has strong holdings to support our research fields including an outstanding Latin American Library. Many students and faculty on campus are associated with the Stone Center for Latin American Studies. Graduate students with a major concentration in Latin America may apply for a grant by presenting a written outline of the project to the Stone Center for summer research in a Latin American country. A great number of our graduate students have received this grant over the years.

All graduate students are strongly encouraged to learn Portuguese and pursue advanced coursework in Luso-Brazilian Studies. Graduate students who wish to focus primarily on Brazilian literary and cultural studies must take advanced coursework in Spanish.

If you have a particular interest in Hispanic linguistics, we wish to inform you that this department does not have a separate linguistics program, but a linguistics section may be included in the comprehensive exam, and the doctoral thesis may be written on a linguistics topic. Tulane's linguistics courses are taught in the Department of Anthropology, which has a strong orientation toward Latin America, concentrating on indigenous languages and cultures. The Department offers the history of the Spanish language, Iberoamerican dialectology and bilingualism, as well as methods of teaching Spanish and Portuguese and topics in applied linguistics, which range from testing oral skills to the teaching of literature in the second language classroom. The department also offers independent studies in linguistics.

If you have already begun graduate studies, the department would like to receive a copy of your thesis or a term paper you have written (only required of candidates continuing studies toward the Ph.D.). Please send this directly to the Director of Graduate Studies, Kathleen Davis.