The Spanish Program at USC is the largest in South Carolina. It offers a wide variety of courses for undergraduate and graduate students. Welcome!
¡Bienvenidos, Bem-vindos! The Spanish & Portuguese Program at USC is the largest in South Carolina. It has more than one hundred majors, 550 minors and 29 faculty members. Students coming to USC can enroll in any of its nationally renowned and well-accredited programs. It has a Master of Arts in Teaching, a Master of Arts in literary and cultural studies, and a Ph.D. in Spanish literature. In addi
tion to these graduate programs, students can also earn an Undergraduate Teaching Certification which is recognized by the State Department of Education and allows them to be placed as a Spanish teacher in the public school system upon graduation. The focus of the Ph.D. in Spanish is Transatlantic Studies. However, students can specialize in any other related literary or cultural topic of the Spanish-speaking world and Graduate Assistantships are also awarded based upon merit, to support their research. The Graduate faculty in Spanish are well recognized in their fields of specialization and have published extensively in Linguistics, Pedagogy, Peninsular and Latin American Literatures and Cultures. They regularly collaborate with other programs such as LASP, Linguistics, CPLT and Woman’s and Gender’s studies, directing dissertations, teaching cross-listed courses and participating in study groups and regional, national and international conferences. The Spanish & Portuguese Program at USC has also hosted several conferences and research lectures, the most recent one titled, “Cultural and Linguistic Intersections of the Transatlantic” (2012). Among the well-known invited speakers to these conferences and talks have been Roberto González Echevarría, Alberto Moreiras, Sibylle Fischer, Fernando Arenas, Gilvan Müller de Oliveira, and Cuban-American writer Edmundo Desnoes. In 2014, the Spanish & Portuguese Program will host its next biennial conference, which will have as its theme the representation of violence and memory. In addition to its strong emphasis on scholarship, its faculty and students have made a solid commitment to the community, establishing work links with non-profit organizations and supporting the Latino Community of South Carolina. In 2012, the Spanish & Portuguese program collaborated with Pragda to bring to Columbia a film festival called “Discovering New Cinema from Spain and Latin America”. The Spanish and Portuguese program also sponsors two summer study abroad programs, one in Spain (Summer I) and the other one in Latin America (Summer II). It also collaborates with such University programs as International Business, and encourages and facilitates semester-abroad experiences for all majors, minors and graduate students interested in perfecting their language skills and doing research abroad. Spanish and Portuguese Program
Department of Languages, Literatures, & Cultures
Humanities Office Building Main Office, Room 815
Columbia, South Carolina 29208
telephone: 803.777.4884
fax: 803.777.0454
Note: All Spanish courses at the intermediate level and beyond are taught in the target language, unless otherwise noted.
06/03/2026
El Profesor Jorge Camacho recién hizo una entrevista con Editorial Verbum sobre su libro "Contra el horror: El cuerpo, la religión y la violencia en la literatura colonial cubana" publicado por la editorial en 2025.
Editorial Verbum: ¿Hasta qué punto cree que la literatura no solo representa la violencia, sino que también la transforma o la vuelve legible para el lector?
Jorge Camacho: La literatura, como instrumento representacional, no se limita a registrar la violencia: la ordena, la jerarquiza, le impone una forma. En ese gesto hay siempre una dimensión estética, y, por tanto, ética, porque toda forma implica una toma de posición. Al narrar, el escritor selecciona materiales y un punto de vista, con los que vuelve legible ese horror bajo una luz particular, política o con una intención de poder.
La entrevista completa está disponible en el sitio web de la editorial:
Professor Rebecca Janzen is currently conducting research in Germany as a Humboldt Fellow, and you can read all about her travels on her blog. She recently posted about her trip to Münster to learn about the history of Anabaptists there:
The Most Problematic Anabaptists (of the Past)
A few months ago when I was researching my trip to the Netherlands, I looked up Mennonite heritage tours to see what places they visited, and if I could go to some of the places on my own. Much to …
05/28/2026
What a fantastic honor for one of our graduating Spanish majors!
This year the William A. Mould Outstanding Senior Thesis Award, named after the first dean of the Honors College, was awarded to Miranda Borland for her thesis titled “The Outsourcing of Asylum: A Critical Discourse Analysis of the U.K. — Rwanda Asylum Partnership and Its Implications for Global Asylum Policy,” directed by Austin Crane, Ph.D. in the McCausland College of Arts and Sciences.
Each year, this award recognizes outstanding achievement in research, creative endeavor or impact through a senior thesis. Congratulations, Miranda! 🎉
05/21/2026
Need Memorial Day plans? Ariana Garcia Varela is leading next week's Tertulia Literaria at All Good Books on Monday, May 25 at 6pm. Stop by the bookstore to pick up a copy of the book and receive a 10% discount!
05/21/2026
A great fellowship opportunity for graduate students from the Modern Language Association!
The MLA invites graduate student members to apply for Edward Guiliano Global Fellowships. These fellowships of up to $2,500 support research and learning opportunities beyond students’ immediate community, including research toward publication, dissertation completion, or transformative experiential learning. Learn more and apply by 9 July. https://www.mla.org/Resources/Career/MLA-Grants-and-Awards/Edward-Guiliano-Global-Fellowships
05/15/2026
Prof. Angela Acosta served as guest editor for the latest Issue 60 of Eye to the Telescope, an online poetry journal under the auspices of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association. She chose the theme of Paying Tribute, a topic very relevant to her research on Spanish modernism, to see how poets would pay tribute to their favorite fandoms, scientists, and celestial bodies.
You can read the 22 speculative poems and her Editor’s Introduction at the link below:
Eye to the Telescope
Eye to the Telescope, the quarterly online journal of SFPA, the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association, an international organization of speculative poets.
05/13/2026
Still deciding on summer classes? You can take beginning Spanish I and 2 (SPAN 109 and SPAN 110) and Basic proficiency in Spanish (SPAN 122) online this summer during the first or second six-week sessions.
Comparative Literature will be offering CPLT 150, Values and Ethics in Literature (3-credit course fulfilling Carolina Core requirements AIU and VSR) online this summer starting June 1 (Summer 3S4).
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