About the Department: A Word from the Chair

The Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Colorado at Boulder offers undergraduate courses in Spanish, Portuguese and Luso-Brazilian language, literary traditions and culture, Hispanic Linguistics, and Arabic language and Ibero-Muslim culture. We also teach an extraordinary number of advanced graduate seminars in Spanish Literature and Hispanic Linguistics, so that our degree programs range from the Bachelor's to the Doctoral level.

Our mission as classroom teachers is carried out by nearly eighty individuals ranging in training and experience from Teaching Assistants to senior Full Professors. The MA and PhD candidates constitute an important part of our language teaching professionals. Both groups are led by a dedicated and experienced team of coordinators. Prof. Anne Becher oversees the largest block, the Spanish 1010 classes. Karen Malcolm oversees Spanish 1020. Alicia Tabler coordinates the 2000 level courses. Dr. Mary Long directs Spanish 3000, 3001 and 3002. Prof. Long is also director of our Spanish for the Professions degree. A regular corps of Instructors and Lecturers, whose numbers vary according to enrollment needs and pressures, fill out the remainder of our language posts.

Another distinct program of our department is the area of Linguistics, a very popular discipline taught by Prof. Esther Brown and Prof. Javier Rivas. Thanks to both, our M.A. in Hispanic Linguistics has shown a marked increase in graduates. The Portuguese section continues to thrive with Visiting Assistant Prof. Joyce Baugher. Although it is not widely known, our Department also houses a third language: Arabic. The team of instructors, lead by Abderrahman Aissa teaches almost two hundred students. Our offerings have grown to ten per year, and the outlook is very bright for additional classes, given the strong interest in Arabic Language and Ibero-Muslim Culture.

Classes in medieval, early modern, modern and contemporary literature, the latter three in Latin American as well as Peninsular areas, are taught by a group of professors who have been on campus anywhere from less than one year to almost twenty years. Professors Julio Baena, Joyce Baugher, Esther Brown, Juan Pablo Dabove, Peter Elmore, Leila Gómez, Asunción Horno-Delgado, Javier Krauel, Ricardo Landeira, Nina Molinaro, Óscar Perea-Rodríguez, Andrés Prieto, Javier Rivas and John Slater teach these classes at both the undergraduate and the graduate seminar level. We are three Full Professors, three Associate Professors and seven Assistant Professors. As soon as the next academic year begins our ranks of tenure track faculty will increase by one additional appointment. The fields for which we will be interviewing, initially at the annual Modern Language Association in San Francisco, and subsequently on-campus, are Modern Peninsular Literature and Medieval Literature. Our hopes are very high for these hires since they will enable our department to fulfill its mission to educate and provide the very best intellectual experience for all of our students.

These diverse teaching fields reflect very closely all of our research interests. The papers we read, the articles we write and the books we publish complement and complete our professional lives as educators in one of the most active and exciting departments on the Boulder Campus of the University of Colorado.

Professor Ricardo Landeira
Chair, Department of Spanish and Portuguese