Program Overview
The Master's program in Spanish at KU provides students with a comprehensive understanding of Spanish literature and culture, equipping them with critical analysis skills and communicative competence. The program requires coursework in various literary periods and regions, including Peninsular and Latin American literature, and offers opportunities for teaching and research experiences abroad. Students can choose between a portfolio defense or a qualifying exam for assessment, and must demonstrate reading knowledge of another foreign language.
Program Outline
Degree Overview:
The master’s degree program in Spanish provides students with the opportunity to study major movements and writers in Iberia and Latin America, acquire critical and theoretical tools for literary and cultural analysis, and develop communicative competence through pedagogical and scholarly formation.
Assessment:
- Portfolio defense or general qualifying examination based on the appropriate department reading lists, partly written and partly oral.
- Portfolio:
- Introduction to the Portfolio and Personal Statement
- CV
- Teaching Statement
- Three Sample Works in Spanish
- Culminating Project
- Oral Defense Exam
- MA Qualify Exam:
- Written exam over a two-day period evaluating knowledge and understanding of the Master’s Reading list.
- Advisor holds a conversation with the student on the strengths and weaknesses of the exam and offers guidance on professional or academic plans.
- Students may retake failed sections of the exam, but only once.
- Failing two or more sections requires retaking the entire exam.
- Failing the exam a second time may result in withdrawal or dismissal from the program.
Other:
- At least 50% of coursework for the master’s degree must be taken at the 700 level or above.
- A minimum of 30 hours of graduate credit in literature, including one seminar in Peninsular literature or in Spanish-American literature.
- A minimum of one course with a focus on each of the following:
- Medieval/Early Modern Peninsular
- Colonial Latin America (prior to 19th Century)
- Modern/Contemporary Peninsular (19th-21st Century)
- Modern/Contemporary Latin/o America
- Students considering pursuing a Ph.D. should enroll in SPAN 795 or an alternative course with a focus in literary theory.
- It is highly recommended that students take at least one course with a focus on film studies or/and cultural studies.
- Two 3-credit hour courses, of the required 30 hours of coursework, may be taken outside of the department with the approval of the graduate advisor.
- SPAN 801: Teaching Spanish in Institutions of Higher Learning - required of all GTAs during their first semester of teaching.
- Reading knowledge of another foreign language as approved by the department.
- For additional information and a list of SPAN & PORT elective courses, please see our Graduate Handbook.
- The department offers summer programs in Barcelona, Spain; Buenos Aires, Argentina, Salvador (Bahia), Brazil.
- KU offers semester/academic year programs in San José, Costa Rica, Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Salamanca, Spain.
- Graduate students have the opportunity to teach and conduct research during summer sessions in Buenos Aires, Argentina; or Barcelona, Spain.
- The department also has a graduate exchange agreement with the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
