The PhD program in romance languages is designed to provide a thorough familiarity with:
- Several fields in literature, such as a movement, a genre, a period, or a literary problem
- The opportunity to situate the student's special interests in the wider context of romance languages and pieces of literature as well as in the context of trends inside and outside Western European culture
- The tools that are necessary to engage literary issues at a high level, the ability to examine new and challenging literary or theoretical perspectives.
Students who enter the PhD program with no knowledge of a second romance language are required to start learning one as soon as possible during their graduate studies.
The PhD program has five components:
- Course work
- Comprehensive examination
- Dissertation prospectus
- Original dissertation
- Final oral defense
