Romance Studies
Field Description
The Field of Romance Studies includes faculty members from the Departments of Romance Studies, Comparative Literature, English, History, Music, Near Eastern Studies, and from the Africana Studies and Research Center. It offers interdisciplinary programs in Romance languages – French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese – and literatures.
Students in Romance Studies select a major in an area of literature (French, Italian, or Hispanic literatures) and choose a minor in one or two other areas from any field.
French, Hispanic, or Italian literature. The field offers a full complement of courses in French, Hispanic, or Italian literatures. It seeks to incorporate current, speculative, theoretical views of literature and culture, in interdisciplinary fashion and in dialogue with multiple methodologies and perspectives.
Students choose one literary/cultural tradition as their major concentration. They are expected to acquire a working knowledge of the general history of that literature/culture, to become conversant with the social and intellectual history, and to speak and write their major language fluently. They are trained in bibliographical, linguistic, and analytical skills essential to teaching and research in the interpretation of those literatures and cultures.
Students are encouraged to study foreign languages other than the language of the major concentration, especially when special linguistic competence is necessary for the student's research. Such need is determined by the student's Special Committee.
Students with a major in French, Hispanic, or Italian literatures teach a mix of language and literature and culture courses as part of their professional training; numerous teaching assistantships are available. A semester-long methodology in language teaching course allows beginning assistants to learn strategies and methodologies, while a practicum allows students to be observed and aided by an experienced instructor in the first semester of their teaching. Orientation workshops on multiple aspects of teaching both language and literature/culture courses are offered before the semester begins, in addition to different workshops throughout the academic year.
Research and study opportunities:
Students are encouraged to spend a term or year abroad to improve their language skills and/or advance their research. The Department currently has an exchange program in France and there are many other opportunities students can apply for during the academic year or over the summer.
Cornell's excellent research library has renowned special collections, such as the Dante and the Witchcraft collections, in addition to a partnership with peer institutions that brings their resources to campus via BorrowDirect, numbering into the 60 million volumes. The field also benefits from the interdisciplinary Medieval Studies Program, the Global Early Modern Studies Colloquium, the Society for the Humanities, the Latin American Studies Program, the Latinx Studies Program, the Feminist Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, the Atkinson Center for Sustainability, and the Institute for European Studies.
Contact Information
Website: https://romancestudies.cornell.edu/graduateEmail: romance_studies@cornell.edu
Phone: 607 255-4264
K161 Klarman Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
Data and Statistics
Subject and Degrees
Romance Studies
Concentrations by Subject
Romance Studies
- French literature
- French studies
- Hispanic literature
- Hispanic studies
- Italian literature
- Italian studies
Faculty
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Romance Studies: French literature; French studies; Hispanic literature; Hispanic studies
- Research Interests: Caribbean literature
- Campus: Ithaca - (Minor Member)
- Concentrations: Romance Studies: French literature; French studies; Italian literature; Italian studies
- Research Interests: French linguistics; Romance linguistics; Italian linguistics and dialectology; social and situational variation; semiotics; translation studies
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Romance Studies: Italian literature; Italian studies
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Romance Studies: Hispanic studies
- Research Interests: Science Fiction, Environment, Borders and Migration, Media and Politics
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Romance Studies: Hispanic studies
- Research Interests: late colonial/early national Latin America
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Romance Studies: Hispanic literature; Hispanic studies
- Research Interests: Hispanic literature, Medieval Iberian Studies
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Romance Studies: Italian literature; Italian studies
- Research Interests: modern Italian literature and culture; poststructuralist theory
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Romance Studies: Hispanic literature; Hispanic studies
- Research Interests: modern Hispanic literature; comparative literature; literary theory; women's studies
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Romance Studies: Hispanic literature; Hispanic studies
- Research Interests: modern Spanish literature & literary theory, gender studies, feminist criticism, history of medicine
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Romance Studies: Hispanic literature; Hispanic studies
- Research Interests: creative writing, speculative fiction, short-story, animal, machine, human interactions, Latin America
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Romance Studies: Hispanic studies
- Research Interests: southern cone, Mexico, Twentieth Century
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Romance Studies: French literature; French studies; Hispanic literature; Hispanic studies
- Research Interests: postcolonial theories, biopolitics, neoliberalism, gender and sexuality, race, African-American, Afro-Hispanic literary fiction, visual art, film, new media, Malinke, English, French, Spanish
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Romance Studies: French literature; French studies
- Research Interests: 19th and 20th century French literature; post-colonial theories and francophone literatures; French and American comics and cinema; interdisciplinary practices
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Romance Studies: French studies
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Romance Studies: French literature; French studies
- Research Interests: Baroque and classical literature; modern (psychoanalytic) critical theory
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Romance Studies: French literature; French studies; Italian literature; Italian studies
- Research Interests: French literature studies; Italian literature studies
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Romance Studies: Hispanic literature; Hispanic studies
- Research Interests: peninsular Spanish literature
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Romance Studies: Italian literature; Italian studies
- Research Interests: Italian literature
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Romance Studies: French literature; French studies
- Research Interests: French Renaissance literature; French baroque literature; cultural studies
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Romance Studies: Hispanic literature; Hispanic studies
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Romance Studies: Hispanic studies
- Research Interests: Latin American diaspora, music of Mexico
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Romance Studies: French literature; French studies
- Research Interests: twentieth-century French literature and theory; psychoanalysis; Jewish studies
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Romance Studies: French literature; French studies
- Research Interests: twentieth-century literature and colonialism; Francophone literature, especially Antillean
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Romance Studies: Italian literature; Italian studies
- Research Interests: Italian literature, especially medieval and early modern; feminist criticism
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Romance Studies: French literature; French studies; Hispanic literature; Hispanic studies
- Research Interests: modern and contemporary poetry of Europe and the Americas; postcolonial Caribbean; critical theory, literary history, philosophy of language, political theory; media studies, genre theory, cross-genre writing, writing and disciplinarity
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Romance Studies: French literature; French studies
- Research Interests: seventeenth-century French literature; film; art and theater; poststructuralism
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Romance Studies: Hispanic literature; Hispanic studies
- Research Interests: Medical Humanities, Environmental Humanities, Central America
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Romance Studies: Hispanic literature; Hispanic studies
- Research Interests: Andean literature and culture; media studies; modern and contemporary Latin American literature
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Romance Studies: Hispanic literature; Hispanic studies
- Research Interests: medieval studies; early modern studies; cartography and theories of space/place; economics and fiction; sound studies; literatures in Spanish from 13th-16th centuries.
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Romance Studies: French literature; French studies; Italian literature; Italian studies
- Research Interests: Italian literature; cultural studies
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Romance Studies: French literature; French studies
- Research Interests: Francophone African Literature and Culture, Postcolonial theory, Affect Theory, Political Philosophy, Afropolitanism, Petrofictions/Ecotopias
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Romance Studies: French studies; Hispanic studies; Italian studies
- Research Interests: Contemporary social and cultural history; European intellectual history; Political theory
Irina Raquel Troconis Gonzalez
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Romance Studies: Hispanic literature; Hispanic studies
- Research Interests: Latin American literature and culture, digital humanities, new media, performance studies, memory studies, border studies, queer studies, Latino studies, literature and exile, virtual realities
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Romance Studies: French literature; French studies
- Research Interests: eighteenth-century French literature; semiotics and narratology; French and Francophone theories; practices of feminism