The Department of Spanish and Portuguese offers the PhD in Hispanic Languages and Literatures (HLL) with two possible tracks: Hispanic and Latin American Literatures and Cultures, and Luso-Brazilian Literatures and Cultures. All graduate students are required to develop broad expertise across a number of programmatic fields (literary genres, historical periods, cultural and social geographies) that ensure their ability to interact with colleagues and their competitiveness in the academic job market. The research specializations of our faculty and graduate students span all of these areas, and furthermore reflect most of the trends in contemporary scholarship, from philology, history of the book, and intersections of literature with material culture, through to aesthetics, the relationship of literature to visual culture, and performance studies. All students are required to study both Spanish and Portuguese as well as another language relevant to the student's research program, to study literature and culture from both sides of the Atlantic. As students progress through our graduate program, they are expected to formulate their own theoretical approaches to research questions regarding an individually defined area of expertise.